Semper Lux

Review: ZIBBCOT vol 5

2009-11-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

Reading ancient texts is an endeavor that always brings immense hazards for the interpreter. This is especially so when one comes to the Biblical texts of the Old Testament since a historical gap of 2500-3500 years separates us, as readers, from the world of the text. Therefore, in order to understand the text in its historical context and to prevent us from importing our own worldview and culture into the text of scripture, it is important to study the cultural milieu in which the Biblical texts were originally composed. The value of these Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) background studies comes in having access to the common worldview that was shared across the cultures of the ANE. As a fuller picture emerges of the thought-world of the times, this can be applied to the reading of the Biblical text in order to catch nuances of significance that could not otherwise be caught. In addition, there are many instances in which faulty interpretations can be overcome by appeal to background material. In such instances, it often appears to be the case that texts were read in light of modern, Western culture. When parallel ideas or narratives can be uncovered in ANE texts, it has the potential to point towards a more culturally grounded interpretation than modern, Western interpreters can give based on their experience of the world.

For this reason, I have been eagerly anticipating the arrival of the new Zondervan Bible Background Commentary of the Old Testament (ZIBBCOT) edited by Dr. John Walton. The stated goal of the project is to open up the world of the ANE and demonstrate how an understanding of the shared culture across the region directly applies to our understanding of the Old Testament text. I've been looking forward to seeing how close the project comes to accomplishing its goals and so I was extremely excited when Zondervan offered me a review copy of volume 5 of the new series! So, with many thanks to the folks at Zondervan and their Koinonia Blog, I offer the following review of ZIBBCOT volume 5.

I should first note that John Walton has established an incredible team of OT and ANE scholars to contribute to this series. Contributors to volume five include the likes of J. Glen Taylor, Mark Chavalas, Alan Milard, Daniel Master, Andrew Hill, Tremper Longman III and Duane Garrett. Clearly, with such an all-star team of scholars, the academic quality of the volume can be expected to be extremely high.

While the caliber of scholar for this project is impeccable, the actual text of the volume is understandable at the level of a serious layperson. The commentary is not cluttered with untranslated Hebrew, Aramaic and other ancient Semitic languages. The prose at most points demands close attention but is not so obtuse as to be completely unintelligible for a layperson. Rather than commenting verse-by-verse or dealing with every major exegetical issue, the commentary focuses mainly on light that the ANE backgrounds can shed on the text of Scripture. To further this end, ZIBBCOT is full of high quality pictures and diagrams that illustrate something that is discussed in the comments. From ancient cuneiform cylinders to reliefs from Egyptian tombs to the iconographic imagery of Mesopotamia, the images span the breadth of the ancient world helping the reader enter into the world of the ANE and to literally see for themselves what the commentator discusses in the body of the commentary. Furthermore, the numerous sidebar articles zoom in on particular issues of significance related to the Biblical text and discuss them in greater depth.

The sum total of these features of ZIBBCOT means that the information that was once available only to specialist scholars is now made available to the layperson and pastor. However, this does not mean that this series is therefore not of use for those in the scholarly community. Copious end notes link the text of the commentary to the current state of the scholarly discussions. Therefore, if an issue or a text is discussed in the body of the commentary, the end notes will give scholars interested in further pursuing that issue a link to the original sources or a fuller discussion in a scholarly work. In this way, the series has immense value as an entry point for those scholars who are interested in gathering resources to go in depth on a particular issue or topic. So, in the end, ZIBBCOT proves to be a resource that is accessible enough that is will benefit those who preach and lead Bible studies in the Church but in depth enough that it will prove to be a valuable resource for scholars in the years to come.

It is often noted that there is a woeful neglect of the Old Testament in the Evangelical Church today. While I believe there are numerous reasons for this, a significant one is that to many, the world of the Old Testament and, therefore, the text of the Old Testament seem too remote and complex to understand. My hope as I read this volume of the ZIBBCOT is that God will use this resource as a tool for helping the Church recover the riches of the Old Testament.

Elijah Prays for Rain- Terry Virgo

2009-08-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

I recently found out about this sermon on prayer from Terry Virgo, a pastor in the UK. Katie and I listened to it yesterday while driving through Nebraska and were immensely blessed, challenged and convicted by it. There are certain sermons or books that help reorient you to the way things actually are instead of the upside down ways that we normally think because of our sinful misperception. This is one of those sermons! After listening to it yesterday, my prayerlessness made absolutely no sense and regular, fervent, long prayer made the most sense in the world. I pray that Jesus will use it in the same way in your lives.

Elijah Prays For Rain from Adrian Warnock on Vimeo.

ht: @JohnPiper

Christian Arrogance

2009-08-14T08:57:00.001-07:00

An awesome video about the dangers and antidotes to Christian arrogance from Tim Gaydos, the Pastor at Mars Hill Church's downtown Seattle campus:

Christian Arrogance from The Resurgence on Vimeo.

ht: @theResurgence

Moving Back to California!

2009-08-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

In 3 days, my wife and I will pack up our Nissan Sentra and hit the road back to California! Our two years in Wheaton have been hard, wonderful, stretching, enlightening, spiritual beneficial and spiritually growing all at the same time. Katie and I have always told our families that we're so glad that the Lord brought us out here for school and for the amazing friendships that He has formed for us in our time out here. We're sad that this time is over but are also super excited about what Jesus is going to do both in an through us in this next stage of life and ministry.

The plan is to arrive back in LA on August 26th where I will continue to be a freelance editor for Crossway Publishers and take on a part-time Pastoral role at Copperhill Community Church. I can't wait to serve under and alongside the leadership of this great church as they seek to further God's mission to glorify His name through His son in the Santa Clarita Valley and the Greater LA Area!

L.A. Times: Must science declare a holy war on religion?

2009-08-12T09:30:00.001-07:00

A very interesting article from yesterday's L.A. Times. I disagree with many of the author's presuppositions regarding the creation/evolution debate. However, the title of the article is what caught my interest. The antagonism that the New Atheism has shown towards religion in general is described as a "holy war". This just goes to show that even the supposedly neutral and objective Atheism is, in reality, just another belief structure which people are passionate to propagate for the 'good of their neighbor' or protect when their cherished beliefs are attacked from outside. Atheism is just as much a religion as anything that its adherents would like to demolish with their arguments.

Must science declare a holy war on religion? - Los Angeles Times

ht: @TGCN

Doctrine of Revelation

2009-08-12T08:49:00.000-07:00

Here's my most recent addition to my own doctrinal statement, a discussion of God's revelation:

God’s perfection and infinity in all His attributes means that He is a Being totally Other from His creation. Therefore, knowledge of God by the creature is utterly impossible unless God first takes the initiative to reveal Himself to His creation. God’s primary revelation of Himself comes in the Person of His Son, Jesus, who is the Word of God incarnated into Human flesh. As the perfect Image and Reflection of the glories of the Father, it is the Son who accurately makes God known to human beings. Corresponding to the Son, who is the living Word of God, is the Bible which is the written Word of God. The 66 books which make up the Old and New Testaments were inspired by the Holy Spirit through the individual human authors so that we might come to know and understand the person of the Father through the Son to whom the Scriptures bear witness. Because God is Truth itself, the Scriptures are completely authoritative for life and faith and are without error in everything that is communicated within them.

When man fell into sin and were cursed as a result, the effects of the fall spread to every area of his being. Thus, certainty in knowledge and interpretation is an impossible goal apart from the intervention of God by His Spirit. Thus, the goal of the Church is to interpret the Scriptures faithfully in their historical/theological context in total dependence upon the Spirit in every step of the process.

Doctrine of God

2009-08-11T08:09:00.001-07:00

This week is my last week in the PMT (Pastoral Ministry Training) Apprenticeship program at my church. One of our final projects is to write a personal doctrinal statement so we can learn to clearly articulate the range of our theology. I'm excited about this project because I'm writing what I hope will amount to a blend of Systematic and Biblical Theology. I'll begin with the doctrine of God and Revelation and then move through Redemptive History from Creation to Fall to Redemption to New Creation. Under each of these headings will fall most of the things that are discussed in the traditional categories of Systematic Theology (Theology Proper, Anthropology, Hamartiology, Soteriology, Ecclesiology and Eschatology). However, rather than abstracted truth, these doctrines will be discussed as they play out in the drama of God's work to rescue the Creation and vindicate His glory in the New Creation. I plan to post my work this week as I progress. So, for your reading pleasure, here's what I have so far in regards to the doctrine of God.

The One God has eternally existed in the three equally-Divine Persons that constitute the One God in Trinity; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The foundation of the life of the God-head is the mutual enjoyment and glorification that each Person of the Trinity has in the other two Persons such that God’s primary passion is for the furtherance of the enjoyment of His own glory. God is completely and totally self-sufficient since He has life in Himself a

nd is absolutely perfect in both love and holiness. All God’s perfections are infinite and so He can be described as infinite in power, knowledge and presence.

The Father is the beginning of the Trinity from whom is eternally generated the Son. It is to the Father that the Son and Holy Spirit are functionally subordinate and as such He is the Head of the Life of the Trinity.

The Son is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and, as such, is fully Divine. The Son is the perfect image and representation of the Father and, as a result, the Father and Son delight in the mutual beauty of their perfections with the full energy afforded by omnipotence. His economic role is to take the glorious perfections of God and make them visible or knowable to the creation. Thus, it is only through the Son that we have access to knowledge of the Father.

The Holy Spirit is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and Son and is fully Divine as are the other two Persons. He proceeds from both the Father and the Son and is Himself the fully energy of the delight with which the Father and Son enjoy the perfection of the Other. It is the economic role of the Holy Spirit to lead creatures to see and savor the beauty of the Son and, as a result, come to know the Father.

While each Person of the Trinity is distinct in His Personhood, there is no distinction as to Divinity and each fully shares the attributes of the Others.

Biblical Counseling

2009-05-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

There are a number of different ways to approach a definition of Biblical Counseling (also called Nouthetic Counseling). It can be described in relationship to Psychology or Integrationist Counseling in that it rejects at a fundamental level the principles of Psychology as totally incompatible with the message of the gospel. A truly Biblical approach to counseling denies that Psychotherapy has any intrinsic value in the process of sanctification because it does not address the ultimate root of most if not all so-called Psychopathologies. Rather, for the Christian, it is the Bible alone that will be a sure guide to the process of sanctification in the life of a believer. As the author of Hebrews says in Heb 4:12-13,

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”

So it is God’s Word[1] that has the power to look deep inside a person and discern the true heart dynamics involved in sin and outward sinful behavior. In addition, this approach to counseling is radically Biblical because it recognizes Scriptures own claims for itself that it is sufficient to deal with all matters of life and sanctification. Just one example of this is Paul’s claim in 2 Time 3:16-17, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for ever good work.”

In addition, further description is needed in terms of just how exactly Biblical Counseling can be described as “counseling”. Counseling as it is used in everyday discourse tends to denote a clinical atmosphere. Indeed most counseling, even most Christian counseling, tends to be a clinical affair in which a counselee comes to see a counselor in an office or clinic for regularly scheduled visits. While Biblical Counseling does not neglect the value of regularly scheduled meetings in which a trained counselor assists someone with issues that they face, it regards counseling as so much more than a merely clinical process. It recognizes that sanctification happens in community and that clinical counseling should be the exception rather than the rule in the Christian life. Again, the author of Hebrews exhorts the Church on this point in Heb 3:12-13, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” He also exhorts us in Heb 9:24-26,

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins.”

So, the Christian community is essential for the process of sanctification. This exhortation or counseling that is to be done in the community of faith is something that happens in the midst of daily life. When friends gather for dinner, at a small group, at a lunch after Sunday morning worship services, at coffee shops, in people’s living rooms, all of life becomes a venue for Christians to exhort one another on towards holiness and sanctification.

Lastly, by way of description, it should be mentioned that Biblical Counseling should be centered on what the Bible itself centers on. Rather than a morbid and reactionary preoccupation with sin in the life of a believer, Biblical Counseling should be primarily focused on helping people see that which is truly most satisfying and most valuable, the glory of God in the face of Christ. This focus on God’s glory will help people to be irresistibly drawn towards Him so that they can be transformed from one degree of glory to another. To be sure, there will be times when friends or pastors will need to assist people in combating particular sins in a concentrated way for a period of time. However, the main focus needs to be on helping people be allured by Jesus in all His glory so that they no longer are allured by the idols that their heart and the world has set up for them.

How should we then define Biblical Counseling? We should understand Biblical Counseling as the application of the redeeming message of the gospel from the Word of God to people’s lives in genuine Christian community so that they increasingly come to recognize the dynamics of sinful idolatry in their hearts and increasingly have that idolatry replaced by the worship and adoration of God because of the all-satisfying nature of His glory in the person of Jesus Christ.

This kind of counseling is absolutely imperative for the Church because it is the means by which God uses to sanctify His people. The entire Epistle to the Hebrews is a letter counseling that Church to persevere in their faith because of the weighty consequences if they fail to persevere and the glorious rewards if they do persevere. As we’ve already seen, in the dead earnest instructions that Hebrews gives, Christians encouraging and exhorting each other in faith and perseverance is absolutely essential if they are going to persevere. So, not only the author of Hebrews Himself exhorts the Church, he tells everyone else in the Church to also exhort and encourage everyone else. This does not take away any of the necessity for God’s Spirit to continue the keep faith alive and growing but it recognizes that He uses the Church body as His means of accomplishing this in the lives of individual Christians.

It is this kind of exhortation in the community of Christ’s body that is the means by which Paul’s glorious vision of the Church in Eph 4 will be accomplished. In Ephesians 4, it is the Pastors and Elders of the Church that are called to equip the body for the work of ministry. That is, they must be faithful to teach the glories of Christ from the Word so that members of the body understand and are increasingly saturated by the gospel and are gripped with that reality. Once the body is equipped by having been taught, they then are ready for the work of ministry in which they proclaim the glories of gospel outside the Church and encourage each other with the realities and implications of the gospel inside the Church. As this radically gospel-centered community continually points each other towards the gospel, helps each other repent from sin and turn to God in His glory, the Church will be growing and fulfilling the cosmic purpose that God has for Her. In Ephesians, the growth of the Church is the growth of the new humanity that is centered around Jesus Christ. The goal for human history is for Jesus to subsume all things under His rule so that the entire cosmos will be remade to fulfill God’s original intent for it. At this stage of redemptive history, the Church is the foretaste and the sign that God will be faithful in this cosmic purpose because the reality of Christ’s rule is here in the sphere of the Church. So we see that Biblical Counseling practiced in community is the means by which God fulfills that purpose for the Church in this age.

[1] God’s Word should not be conceived of merely as a book but the Bible as God’s Written Word corresponding to His Living Word, Jesus Christ.

Theology of Change and Christian Motivation

2009-05-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

The central message of the Bible is that God is at work in the world to change and transform it so that it fulfills its original purpose of reflecting God’s glory back to Him. The vision of Israel’s prophets was that God would act and gloriously renew the creation so that war would be done away with, ‏שָׁלוֹם would reign and God’s glory and presence fills the whole Earth as the waters cover the seas (Is 11:1-9, 25:1-12, 65:17-25; Ez 37; Hab 2:14; Hos 2:14-23). The life and ministry of Jesus fulfilled the OT expectation of Israel so that God’s righteous kingdom and new creational reign broke into human history and began the work transforming the created order (Mk 1:1-15; 2 Cor 5:17). While Jesus and the community of His people are the fulfillment of the OT hope, it is an inaugurated fulfillment that awaits the final consummation in which the old age is completely done away with and YHWH’s righteous rule holds total sway over the entire cosmos (1 Cor 15:20-28; Rev 19-22).

It is within the framework that we must think about change on the individual level. It is because of God’s universal purpose to redeem the creation that there is hope for the transformation of an individual or a group of individuals. However, we must always recognize that there is a special importance to the transformation of individual human beings. Genesis 1-2 make abundantly clear that the crown of God’s creation was the man and woman who were made in God’s own image and given the mandate to rule over and subdue the cosmos. As the crown of God’s work, they had dominion over the creation and were called to extend God’s presence over the face of the Earth. Sadly, it was also because of this privileged position that the creation followed Adam into sin and a state of fallenness and brokenness. The good news is that just as the creation followed our first parents into sin and death after the original creative acts, Romans 8:20-21 tells us that it will also follow redeemed humanity into the new creation as God exercises His creative power finally and decisively. The state that the created order has been longing for and groaning for is the “freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

This salvation-historical framework for understanding personal growth and transformation is essential for keeping things in their proper biblical place. Just as redemptive-history is the process by which God renews the entire created order by His power, individual transformation is not something that one does to oneself but something that is ultimately done by God to someone. As Paul says in 2 Cor 3:17-19, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

The focal point for this Divinely enabled process is the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross is the means by which God removed our unrighteousness and gave us the righteousness of Jesus so that we could be justified before Him. All this is brought about through our union with Christ who is our Federal head. So, union with Christ is enabled by his death and resurrection but it is also the means by which sanctification happens in the Christian life. As Paul tells us in 2 Cor 5:17, “if anyone is in Christ, there is new creation”. Elsewhere in the New Testament, this phenomenon is called “the new birth” and is known by theologians as “regeneration”. That is, when one comes to faith in Christ, the Spirit instantly brings about New Creation in that person’s life by effecting a union with Jesus who has already passed through death and brought in God’s new creation. That is why Paul writes in 2 Cor 4:6, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Regeneration is an act of new creation akin to the original creation that began when God spoke light into the darkness of the chaotic world. Therefore, it is union with Jesus on the basis of and into His death and resurrection that is the foundation and means by which any growth or personal transformation can happen.

The act of regeneration is the basis for this entire process of sanctification because, when the Spirit regenerates a person, he is given an entirely new set of priorities, motivations and desires. That person is literally remade so that their primary motivating factors no longer come from Satan, sin and the Devil but from the Triune God has H has made Himself manifest in Jesus Christ. As such, a regenerated person is brought in into a process by which God will enable him to fulfill the original purpose of creation, namely, reflecting God’s glory back to Himself. However, it important to further articulate how God implants these new desires and motivations within a person.

In 2 Cor 3:18, which I quoted previously, it is interesting to note that Paul links “beholding the glory of the Lord” and “being transformed into the same image from on degree of glory to another.” I believe that the best way to describe the link that Paul has in mind here is that beholding God’s glory in the face of Christ is the means by which transformation from one degree of glory to another occurs. So in seeking to articulate the nature of Christian sanctification, it is imperative that any efforts at sanctification be connected with seeing God in His glory. However, this begs the questions as to exactly how beholding God’s glory is sanctifying? It is this question that gets at the heart of Christian motivation and the process of sanctification.

Thomas Chalmers was a Scottish mathematician and preacher in the 18^th and 19^th centuries who worked hard to articulate how God’s glory is sanctifying. He argues that there are two basic ways in which an attempt can be made to motivate a person towards sanctification and holiness. The first is to try to convince a person of the ugliness of the world so that they are disgusted and turn from it. The second is, in his words, “by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign an old affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one.” Chalmers regards the first method as a deficient motivating factor for a person pursuing sanctification. The reason why it will not work is because all things in nature, even metaphysical things, abhor a vacuum. It is impossible to sufficiently motivate someone by showing the deficiency in what they should leave because there will then be nothing to fill the void that is left. Chalmers writes, “When told to cut out the world from his heart, this may be impossible with him who has nothing to replace it- but not impossible with him, who has found in God a sure and satisfying portion.” Practically speaking, in dealing with a sin issue in someone’s life, it will not work to simply motivate them by exhorting them to leave the sin, such as pornography, because of how bad it is. A person may be well aware of the bad effects of pornography both personally and socially but will be unable to be rid of that sin unless there is something else to replace it.

The second method works precisely because it replaces sin with something more satisfying. Furthermore, the gospel holds out something that is not merely more satisfying but infinitely so such that there is nothing that could usurp the place of God’s glory in Jesus. The glory and presence of God in the life of a Christian is so extremely joy inducing and satisfying that it causes one to be drawn irresistibly away from sin and towards God. Thus, it is in this way that beholding the glory of the Lord transforms us from one degree of glory to another. Before regeneration, a human being is unable to see God in His all-satisfying glory and be drawn to Him. However, once the Spirit comes and lifts the veil so that we begin to catch a glimpse of God in His glory, magnificence and grandeur, then it is impossible for a person not to be drawn to that sight. So a person forsakes sin and, enabled by the Spirit, pursues Christ for all of the joy and satisfaction that is held out and offered in His person.

Fear of the Lord

2009-05-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

The most natural sense of “fear” to English speakers is the idea of terror. We find that ‏ירא‎ is often used in this sense in the OT. A general sense in which ירא is used to denote a genuine terror or dread is Ex 2:14 in which Moses fears that he will be discovered to have killed the Egyptian who was persecuting a Hebrew. Essentially, there is dread that punishment will obtain for his actions in killing an Egyptian.

This general concept of fear as terror or dread gets applied with reference to God in several places in the OT:

· Jonah 1:10 Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them so.

· Jonah 1:16 Then the men feared the LORD even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.

· Hab. 3:2 O LORD, I have heard of your renown, and I stand in awe (fear), O LORD, of your work. In our own time revive it; in our own time make it known; in wrath may you remember mercy.

The sailors on board Jonah’s ship feared YHWH because they were in terror that their lives would be taken from them. Although “fear” language is not always present, when a prophet was visited with a vision of YHWH’s presence, there was often fear:

· Is. 6:5 And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

· Ezek. 1:28 Like the bow in a cloud on a rainy day, such was the appearance of the splendor all around. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. When I saw it, I fell on my face, and I heard the voice of someone speaking.

· Rev. 1:17 When I saw him (Jesus), I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last…

In each of these instances, it seems that the prophet or seer was in fear for his life. This is likely based on YHWH’s statement to Moses:

· Ex. 33:20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”

So, when a human being perceived himself to be in the presence of YHWH, there was a genuine terror that his life would be taken because, as a sin tainted human being, he could not stand in God’s presence.

A second step in the Fear of the Lord, especially in the Old Testament, is provided in looking again at Jon 1:16

· Jonah 1:16 Then the men feared the LORD even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the LORD and made vows.

This verse links the idea of fear as terror with a worship context. Because they were afraid of YHWH killing them with the storm at sea, they worshipped Him by offering sacrifice in hopes that He would spare their lives. Thus fearing a deity was often synonymous with worship and devotion towards that deity.

· 2Chr. 19:9 He charged them: “This is how you shall act: in the fear of the LORD, in faithfulness, and with your whole heart;

· 2Kings 17:7 ¶ This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had feared other gods

· 2Kings 17:35-39 The LORD had made a covenant with them and commanded them, “You shall not worship other gods or bow yourselves to them or serve them or sacrifice to them, but you shall worship the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great power and with an outstretched arm; you shall bow yourselves to him, and to him you shall sacrifice. The statutes and the ordinances and the law and the commandment that he wrote for you, you shall always be careful to observe. You shall not worship other gods; you shall not forget the covenant that I have made with you. You shall not worship other gods, but you shall worship the LORD your God; he will deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies.”

· Deut. 10:12-13 So now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? Only to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the LORD your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being.

· Psa. 22:23 You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!

The reason why fear language would be used synonymously with worship and devotion is apparent from the ANE background to worship. Deities were worshiped in the ANE because of the benefits that they could provide for the people. They were thus feared because people recognized that the deity had the ability to give or withhold that which the people wanted or needed, i.e. abundant crops, victory over enemies, etc. (all of which were life or death matters). This is made explicit in Ps 90:11

· Psa. 90:11 Who considers the power of your anger? Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.

Therefore, YHWH is to be feared because of the potential of His wrath which would take away happiness.

Thus from the OT perspective, those who did not worship YHWH are described as those who did not fear him:

· Gen. 20:11 Abraham said, “I did it because I thought, There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.

· Deut. 25:18 how he attacked you on the way, when you were faint and weary, and struck down all who lagged behind you; he did not fear God.

· Psa. 55:19 God, who is enthroned from of old, will hear, and will humble them— because they do not change, and do not fear God.

For Israel, the Fear of the Lord was mediated by the context of the covenant. In Lev 18:5, Moses makes it clear that life (life in the land as a picture of eschatological life) would be the result of Israel’s covenant faithfulness. Interestingly then, there are several instances in which life is said to be the result for those who fear the Lord.

· Prov. 10:27 The fear of the LORD prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short.

· Prov. 14:27 The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, so that one may avoid the snares of death.

· Prov. 19:23 The fear of the LORD is life indeed; filled with it one rests secure and suffers no harm.

· Prov. 22:4 The reward for humility and fear of the LORD is riches and honor and life.

Thus, fearing the Lord is linked very closely with obedience in that it results in the same thing as obedience. This is confirmed in that there are many places where the “Fear of the Lord” is said to result in covenantal obedience or hating that which is evil:

· Gen. 22:12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

· Ex. 18:21 You should also look for able men among all the people, men who fear God, are trustworthy, and hate dishonest gain; set such men over them as officers over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens.

· Is. 50:10 Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant, who walks in darkness and has no light, yet trusts in the name of the LORD and relies upon his God?

· Job 1:1 There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

· Prov. 14:2 Those who walk uprightly fear the LORD, but one who is devious in conduct despises him.

· Psa. 19:9 the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether.

· Prov. 8:13 The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.

· Prov. 16:6 By loyalty and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the LORD one avoids evil.

· Neh. 5:15 The former governors who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people, and took food and wine from them, besides forty shekels of silver. Even their servants lorded it over the people. But I did not do so, because of the fear of God.

· 2Chr. 19:9 He charged them: “This is how you shall act: in the fear of the LORD, in faithfulness, and with your whole heart;

Fear of God is inextricably linked with obedience. However, it is not just abstracted obedience to some universal standard, it is obedience that is within the covenant relationship. Fearing God leads to acting faithfully within the confines of the covenant relationship. It is important to recognize that obedience here flows directly out of worship. Because fear is used in the context of covenant in the sense of “worship” it is this worship of God for God’s sake which will lead to obedience which will then bring about the covenant blessings.

In addition, Jer 32 makes it explicit that fearing God is something that ultimately can be given to a person only by God Himself.

· Jer. 32:40 I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never to draw back from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, so that they may not turn from me.

Therefore, it is important to recognize that the “Fear of the Lord” can thus become the basis of confident expectation for God to work on one’s behalf. In other words, someone who fears God can have hope that God will grant Him the blessings of life.

· Job 4:6 Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?

Job’s friends were wrong in the fact that they thought that fearing God would result in temporal blessings now and insulate one from sufferings. However, they were correct to judge that fearing God, which is something that God gives to us, is the basis upon which we can hope for God to work on our behalf now but more especially in eternity. In light of this, fearing God removes the need to fear anything else in all creation:

· Psa. 27:1 The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

Nothing else can be feared because when one fears the Lord and is in right covenant relationship with Him, there is nothing that can threaten to take away what satisfies us because God is what gives us our satisfaction. In Christ, there is nothing that can remove us from His grasp.

· 1Pet. 3:14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled,

Fear implies a mastery over something. What someone is afraid of, that he is a slave to. Fearing someone who persecutes us implies that they have mastery over us. Fearing God means that no person or thing on earth is able to control us or have mastery over us save God.

Furthermore, in Christ, even the threat of God’s wrath is removed. As John says:

· 1John 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

Therefore, for Christians, the terror element of God’s wrath is forever removed. Although, if perfect love casts out fear and there is no fear of God’s wrath anymore, then what is the cause of Christians continuing to fear God after being regenerated and justified?

· 1Pet. 1:17-19 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

These passages indicate that, for the Christian, fear (in the sense of worship and devotion) is the result of knowing that God judges impartially and recognizing that the cost of our ransom was the life of Jesus, the Son of God. The knowledge of this should produce an awe or reverence that works itself out in a life of obedience that magnifies the ransoming work of God in Christ.

"Heart" in the Old Testament

2009-03-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

1. The first step in understanding what the term “heart” (‏לב or ‏ לבב) means in the OT is that, at its core, refers to the organ of a person’s internal life or reality.

Gen 17:17- “Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said in his heart, ‘Will a child be born to a man one hundred years old? And will Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’”
Gen 24:45- “Before I had finished speaking in my heart, behold, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder, and went down to the spring and drew, and I said to her, ‘Please let me drink.’”

This encompasses intellect, emotions and will. Out of 867 total occurrences, Beale notes that the term refers to intellectual activity 205 times, emotional activity 166 times and volitional activity 195 times.

Intellectual: 1 Kings 10:24 “All the earth was seeking the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom which God had put in his heart.”
Emotional: Gen 42:28- Then he said to his brothers, “My money has been returned, and behold, it is even in my sack.” And their hearts sank, and they turned trembling to one another, saying, “What is this that God has done to us?”. See also Is 30:29 “You will have songs as in the night when you keep the festival, And gladness of heart as when one marches to the sound of the flute, To go to the mountain of the LORD, to the Rock of Israel.”
Volitional: Is 32:4 “The mind (‏‏לבב) of the hasty will discern the truth, And the tongue of the stammerers will hasten to speak clearly.”

2. The OT is very clear that God is in control of the human heart in each of its dimensions (intellectual, emotional, volitional) to do with as He wills. This is clear in the Exodus account of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.

Ex 4:21 “The LORD said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.’”

The Exodus narrative details this prediction of what YHWH would do with Pharaoh followed by a consistent hardening of Pharaoh’s heart through each of the ten plagues.
God is not merely sovereign in when it comes to a judicial hardening; the OT also views Him as responsible for the heart having a right orientation to God:

Ezek 36:26 “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”

While God is ultimately sovereign in determining the orientation of the heart, this is fully compatible with mankind being responsible before God for their thoughts, decisions and actions:

Deut 15:7 “If there is a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother”

3. The heart, in its intellectual, emotional and volitional dimensions, is the organ through which a person’s spiritual relationship with God is governed. It is this three-dimensional internal reality through which a person is oriented to God, either rightly or wrongly. An improper orientation to God has already been seen in the example of Pharaoh’s hard heart. Moses, in several places, exhorts Israel to be rightly related to God with reference to the heart:

Deut 6:5-6 “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.”
Deut 8:2 “You shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.”

As it applies to one’s relationship with God, the heart is to be totally and completely devoted to God. The Psalmist prays that His heart would be undivided in love for God:

Ps 86:11-12 “Teach me Your way, O LORD; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear Your name. I will give thanks to You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, And will glorify Your name forever.”

The wholeness of heart and right relationship with God that is an internal reality in the heart is expected to spill out in outward obedience to God as is seen in David’s prayer to God on behalf of Solomon:

1 Chr 29:19 “and give to my son Solomon a perfect heart to keep Your commandments, Your testimonies and Your statutes, and to do them all, and to build the temple, for which I have made provision.”

However, it was precisely a division of heart or lack of “wholeness” of heart that lead to Solomon’s spiritual downfall:

1 Kgs 11:4 “For when Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods; and his heart was not wholly devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been.”

However, God foretells a time when He would, through the Spirit, orient His whole people’s hearts to Himself properly with the corresponding outworking of covenantal obedience:

Jer 31:33 “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

4. If 1-3 above are true, then it follows Biblically that when God acts to bring a person into right relationship with Himself by acting internally on their heart, it has a corresponding result that transforms a person intellectually, emotionally and volitionally. The prophecy in Ezekiel 36 that God would give His people a new heart of flesh indicates spiritual transformation. If the heart consists of an intellectual, emotional and volitional component then it follows that all three will be renewed when God acts to give people a new heart. Those who have been spiritually transformed and given a new heart should think about the world and their life differently. Their emotions will be correspondingly affected so that they will respond to God with the proper emotional response. In addition, it should affect the way a person lives their lives and the decisions that they make.
When these three dimensions are combined, it results in an internal life that is wholly committed to God and the cause of His glory and kingdom on the Earth. Because we are whole beings and not merely a body a soul loosely united, the transformation of a person’s internal reality will result in a life that manifests outward obedience to God that is properly motivated by the heart.

Ps 119:34 “Give me understanding, that I may observe Your law and keep it with all my heart”

Mark Driscoll on CNN

2009-02-13T10:33:00.000-08:00

Mark Driscoll talks straight about sex and Jesus on CNN with D.L. Hughley.

Tortured for Christ

2009-01-18T12:22:00.000-08:00

By all accounts, Christianity has been a religion of suffering from its very inception. It was birthed out of the ashes of Christ’s suffering and crucifixion and was spread through the sufferings and eventual violent deaths of all but one of the 13 Apostles. The Apostle Paul himself wrote of Christian suffering in Philippians 1:19, “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake….” In the second century, it was the noted Father Tertullian who wrote that, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

While the persecution in the early centuries of the Church was certainly fierce, our modern period, with the Twentieth Century in particular, have seen the worst persecution of Christians on a global scale. The rise of the Totalitarian states and world Communism at the dawn of the Twentieth Century particularly signaled troubled times ahead for the Church who desired to remain faithful to their profession of Christ and His mission in the World. It was into this milieu that Richard Wurmbrand, a Lutheran pastor in Romania, began to minister. Because of his profession of faith and ministry involvement with the underground Church in the Soviet Bloc countries, he was imprisoned for a total for fourteen years and suffered intense periods of torture and solitary confinement. Eventually, his plight became known in the West and he was ransomed out of Romania so that he could be a spokesman for the suffering, underground Church worldwide. After leaving Romania, he recounted his experiences along with the vibrant faith of the underground Churches in his book Tortured for Christ. Three aspects of Wurmbrand’s testimony in this book particularly stuck me as lacking and needing work in my own life; first, the necessity of Christian suffering; second, the love of Christians for their enemies and third, the Gospel zeal that should be an enduring mark of every Christian.

As I read Wurmbrands portrayal his time of intense suffering under the Communists and the sufferings of his fellow Christians, I was struck not merely by their perseverance through suffering but their willingness to suffer. He wrote, “A man really believes not what he recites in his creed, but only the things he is ready to die for. The Christians of the underground Church have proved that they are willing to die for their faith.” Rather than deny Christ or remain private with their faith, the underground Christians in the Soviet countries were prepared to go public with their confession knowing full well that do to so was to invite prison, torture and likely death. How different is this from my faith, which is not really willing to suffer anything, let alone intense torture that could not have been conceived of even in the worst of nightmares? Yet, this is clearly the standard that the New Testament sets for followers of Christ. To follow Him is to take the way of the Cross. The path of suffering leading to the cross is not incidental to the Christian life, it IS the Christian life and is the main means by which God has appointed that the faith should spread. I pray that our faithful God would strengthen me individually and our Western Church corporate to be willing and eager to suffer in order to show the world the dazzling beauty of Jesus.

The Christians of the Underground Church were not only willing to suffer, they suffered in such a way that they have become a model for us of loving our enemies. At one point in the book Wurmbrand writes,

“I have seen Christians in Communist prisons with fifty pounds of chains on their feet, tortured with red-hot iron pokers, in whose throats spoonfuls of salt had been forced, being kept afterward without water, starving, whipped, suffering from cold- and praying with fervor for the Communists. This is humanly inexplicable! It is the love of Christ which was poured out in our hearts.”

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lists humble love for enemies as one of the marks of those who are truly a part of His New Creational rule. Such a mark is conspicuously absent from most of the Western Church and my life in particular. I want to see such a powerful demonstration of the Spirit’s power in my life and in the life of the Church here in the West but sadly we are so often consumed with our rights and we tend to cover our hatred for our enemies by calling it our “righteous indignation”. I desperately need God’s grace through His Spirit to produce this astonishing fruit that is so counter-cultural but so central to God’s purposes on Earth.

One of the astounding facets of Wurmbrand’s narrative is how zealous Soviet Christians were to tell of the grace of God through Jesus in their lives. In reality, both the suffering of those Eastern Christians and their passion to show Christ’s love to their enemies are ways in which the Gospel spread in the Soviet Bloc. However, their evangelism was not confined merely to this sort of “lifestyle evangelism”. They were very quick to want to be witnesses to the grace of God to the Communists. Wurmbrand writes of his own zeal for evangelism, “In the first days after my conversion, I felt that I would not be able to live any longer. Walking on the street, I felt a physical pain for every man and woman who passed by. It was like a knife in my heart, so burning was the question of whether or not he or she was saved.” In the midst of the suffering of the Communist nations, there was a blood earnestness about the work of evangelism and discipleship which is greatly lacking in my life. I greatly need God’s grace to push the reality of the Gospel deeper into my soul to feel this kind of passion and desire that Wurmbrand felt for the evangelism of the Communists around him.

Winter Life

2009-01-14T08:39:00.000-08:00

This is our front walk in the process of being shoveled

This is our front walk when the shoveling was done!

As a native Southern Californian, this whole winter thing is still very new and strange even though it is our second winter in Chicago. The sun-loving beach bum in me wants to revolt against staying indoors for the majority of 5 months of the year, not to mention all the snow shoveling and car cleaning that must take place. However, in experiencing real seasons and real winter for the first time, I think there is a kind of natural rhythm that God has built into life by the seasons. Winter is a time when God slows life down and we have more time to think and reflect. If such seasons are used well, they can be profitable times of introspection, ministering the Gospel to my soul and greater reflection on the greatness of our God! This runs totally contrary to how I'm wired as a white, Western, Southern-Californian male. If it weren't for times like this, I might never stop for extended periods of time to slow down the pace of life. So, while I'm still not a huge fan of dealing with winter in the frozen North, I'm learning to appreciate its beauty and God's grace through giving us each season of the year.

Reflections on a Semester with Calvin

2009-01-13T21:56:00.000-08:00

It looks as if for once in my life I'm ahead of the game. While everyone who is (worthily) celebrating the 500th Anniversary of John Calvin's birth by reading through his Institutes of the Christian Religion is only beginning their work, I just completed reading through the Institutes for my Pastoral Ministry Apprenticeship. In the spirit of the Calvin Quincentennial, I offer this reflection on my past semester with Calvin.

John Calvin was likely the greatest theological mind that God has brought the church since Augustine of Hippo. While many have recognized Calvin’s theological and exegetical brilliance, far less realize that he was also a deeply pastoral man whose heart beat for Christians to know God and live in covenant relationship with Him. This is evident all throughout his commentaries, which are not obscure, scientific observations on the Biblical texts in the ancient languages but incisive, careful exegesis combined with a pastor’s confidence that God’s Spirit authored the Scriptures so that we might know him. Such a concern is also evident in Calvin’s magisterial Institutes of the Christian Religion, a work that Calvin intended to have the dual function of an apologia for the faith of the Protestants and an instruction for Christian on what being a Christian is all about. The Institutes is certainly a towering work of theology but it is not theology in the vein of dusty Scholasticism; it is theology that bleeds a passion for God and a passion for men to know Him and ascribe to Him the honor that He is due. Such is evident in the very first sentence of the Institutes, in I. i. 1., “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” After having spent the last semester with Calvin reading the Institutes, I can say that through this study Calvin has helped me to know God and myself more. Not only this, but Calvin lays God before us and in so doing allows us to understand ourselves better in His light. Therefore, I seek to lay out in this paper some reflections on how Calvin has helped me to know God and know myself better in the course of reading the Institutes of the Christian Religion.

From the very beginning of the Institutes, Calvin is concerned to demonstrate God’s utter freedom and majesty. God is totally “other” and can in no way be sought out through mere human reason. Calvin writes in I. iv. 13.,

“In short, even if not all suffered under crass vices, or fell into open idolatries, yet there was no pure and approved religion, founded upon common understanding alone. For even though few persons did not share in the madness of the common herd, there remains the firm teaching of Paul that the wisdom of God is not understood by the princes of this world.”

In this way, Calvin rejects the entire scope of Medieval “Natural Theology” which found its ultimate expression in Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. Such a strong insistence on the transcendence of God can often have the negative effect of making God seem quite remote from humankind. However, the Triune God is not only transcendent, He is paradoxically very immanent and intimate with His people. Such is the importance of revelation. Everything that we know about God is what God chooses to reveal to us by means of His Word. Therefore Calvin writes, “since either the custom of the city or the agreement of tradition is too weak and frail and bond of piety to follow in worshiping God, it remains for God himself to give witness of himself from heaven.” Revelation is our lifeline to God and ultimately this revelation was given to us in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Now, any knowledge of God must come through the working of the Spirit on a person’s life to allow them to see the glorious radiance of God in the person of Jesus.

While it is wonderful good news that the transcendent God makes Himself immanent through revelation in the living Word of His Son and the written Word that bears testimony to Him, Calvin also offers us caution about our knowledge of God. In I. xiii. 1. Calvin writes,

“For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to ‘lisp’ in speaking to us. Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness.”

As Paul writes in 1 Cor 12:12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” Because God is transcendent and we are mere finite creatures, God must accommodate himself to our limited capacities for knowledge and understanding if he is to reveal anything of Himself to us. It seems that such an insight as this should lead us to great caution in how we do Theology. We don’t know God as He is in Himself, we know Him as He has accommodated Himself to us through revelation, the primary and fullest means of which is Jesus. The implication of this is that Jesus is central to revelation and to our ability to know God.

In addition, it was encouraging to see that Calvin understood the essence of what Piper calls “Christian Hedonism. He writes in I. xiv. 22., “It is to recognize that God has destined all things for our good and salvation but at the same time to feel his power and grace in ourselves and in the great benefits he has conferred upon us, and so bestir ourselves to trust, invoke, praise, and love him.” Here is contained the astounding truth that God’s work on our behalf is what bring Him the most glory. God destines all things for our good which displays his power in the creation and also invokes the response of love, trust and praise. So, in this way, when we are satisfied in God, God is most glorified.

In III. ii. Calvin deals with the topic of faith in a way that is more comprehensive and sweet to the Christian than I have seen anywhere else. He defines faith in III. ii. 7. As “a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” It is this faith that God uses to unite us to Christ and which assures us that God is merciful and kind towards us. This kind of firm and confident assurance must be present in the life of a Christian as it is one of the primary marks of the Spirit’s work in a person.

However, this is not to say that in this “now/not yet” age that faith will not have its moments of doubt. While it is certainly true that doubt in faith should cause to always go back and examine ourselves to see whether we are truly in the faith. However, weak or doubting faith is not a sign that one is not a Christian; it is actually an assurance that one is indeed a Christian. Calvin writes, “He who, struggling with his own weakness, presses toward faith in his moments of anxiety is already in large part victorious.” So a faith that, despite its weakness and doubt, still moves toward Christ and longs for Him is actually a sign that ones faith is real and genuine.

Again, God knows the human frailty and weakness and sustains us with faith empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit so that we remain faithful to Him in confident assurance of His grace towards us throughout our life. However, this sign of God’s goodness towards us is not merely an internal reality, it is something that is signified for us through the two sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Calvin’s understanding, particularly of the Supper, is a beautiful exposition of God’s love and care for us. Calvin writes of this in IV. xviii. 19., “the Supper should be a sort of continual food on which Christ spiritually feeds the household of his believers.” It is a visible sign of the invisible reality that Christ flesh and blood are our true food which nourish us and give us life which will fully be experienced in His presence for eternity. So, as the Church gathers to partake of the Lord’s Supper, Christ is there present through His Word, continuing the flow of grace towards us that was begun with His sacrificial, atoning death on the Cross.

Lastly, it should be mentioned that Calvin does as points fall into a sort of Platonic dualism by which he seems to indicate that the “body” is evil and the “spirit” is good. Such dualisms have had a powerful influence on Western Society and the Church in particular. So for a man such as Calvin, who got so many things right in his theology and understanding of the Scriptures, such accommodations to the culture should serve as a warning that there are “gaps” in our theology where we have unwittingly become entangled with the philosophy of the age and not with the doctrine from the Word of God.

So much more could be recounted in spending a whole semester soaking in the God entranced theology of a man such as John Calvin. Space hinders me from discussing Calvin’s Trinitarian vision, his account of the substitutionary atonement, his vision of the Church that is so desperately needed in our Western, individualistic society and his stunning accounting of God’s sovereignty both over the entire creation in general and in the salvation of man more specifically. If his theological work were studied more closely and heeded more carefully, it could have the same radical, powerful impact on the Church of the 21st century as it had in the 16th century when Calvin lived and wrote.

Fiction Family

2009-01-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

Over the past couple of years, I've really appreciated Nickel Creek's folk influenced style and Jon Foreman's solo work on his 4 EP's for each season. So how stoked was I when I found out that Sean Watkins from Nickel Creek and Jon Foreman had teamed up to record a side-project together! They're going to be at the NCC Union on Friday Jan. 16th and I can't wait to enjoy this show. In the meantime, enjoy this preview music video...

Fiction Family - When She's Near from ATO Records on Vimeo.

Sons of Thunder

2008-12-17T19:50:00.000-08:00

My wife, Katie, and I are huge fans of the worship music that comes out of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. The music has a pretty awesome Seattle/indie feel to it. The Church has made available quite a few live MP3's available for download on their website. Check out this sample of the amazing song "Redemption" from their band Sons of Thunder.

"

Together for the Gospel- Christmas Edition

2008-12-15T18:02:00.001-08:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

What is Christmas?

2008-12-11T06:56:00.001-08:00

That's Christmas! from andy pearce on Vimeo.

If you're tired of the commerciality and exploitation of the Christmas season and you've ever wondered what Christmas is all about... you should check out this video.

The Role of Reason in Coming to Faith

2008-12-06T12:13:00.000-08:00

For my New Testament Theology class at Wheaton with Dr. Nicholas Perrin, we were recently asked to do an online bulletin board post and interact with other students in regard to the role of reason in coming to faith. My professor was looking for some integrated theological thinking from the New Testament that bears on this issue. So, for what its worth, here's what I posted on the Wheaton bulletin board for my class.

At the outset, I believe that it is important to first lay down a definition of what I mean by the concept of “reason” as I approach this discussion. Although the concept has been weakened in our postmodern climate, reason is often understood in terms of the autonomous reason that grew out of the period of the Enlightenment. In this case, reason is a universal principle to which all of life must conform and by which all things are judged, even the concept of “God”. Such a concept of reason has no place within a Christian worldview shaped by the Bible. The New Testament makes it clear that all things are created by and for Christ and that He continues moment by moment to uphold the created order by the word of his power (Col 1:15-17 & Jn 1:3). So, there are no universal principles at work in the world that do not have their source and continuance constantly upheld by Jesus.

While Christians should reject the autonomous reason of the Enlightenment, there is a Biblical place for reason in New Testament Theology. This definition of “reason” is the rational faculty or cognition that human beings possess by virtue of their being created in the Image of God. However, the problem with this reason is that, as Paul points out in Rom 3:9-20 and 1 Cor 1:21 & 2:14, it is fallen and unable to seek God or find Him on its own.

If unaided human reason is thus useless with regard to faith so that it does not even begin to seek after God, what then is its role in a human being coming to faith? I think that we must affirm that the New Testament writers use language which expresses the exercise of human rational faculties in the process of salvation. Language such as “seeing”, “hearing”, “knowing”, “receiving”, etc all speaks of the human exercise of the rational faculties. However, it is part of the process of coming to faith in such a way that it cannot be said that man works together or cooperates with God in the process of coming to faith. Nowhere is this made more explicit than in 1 Cor 1:18-2:16. Wisdom which equates to a profound grasp of Christ’s eschatological victory and atonement on the Cross, is mediated to human beings only by the Spirit. Human reason or wisdom, unaided, is of no value and so must be brought about by the Spirit who imparts True Wisdom embodied in Christ crucified. This spiritual “making alive” is not done apart from human responsibility. The Spirit energizes our reason so that we are willingly drawn to Christ and call out to God for grace. This is done in such a way that human beings can in no way claim credit for this astonishing work of God’s grace through Jesus. It is, as Paul said, “all for the praise of his (God’s) glory.”

20 Books in your 20's

2008-12-04T20:37:00.001-08:00

In keeping with the book them I seem to have going, I thought I'd post a link to Justin over at the Buzzard Blog who has compiled a list of "20 books to read in your 20's". I have read many of these books on his list and have heard very good things about the one's I haven't read. So, I pray that this list can be helpful for your faith and walk with Jesus.

A Few Books I'm Looking Forward to Reading in the Next Few Months

2008-12-04T09:05:00.000-08:00

As a follow up to my last post, I thought I just list a few books that I'm excited to read in the next few months. Whether or not that will actually happen is another story since I'm always too ambitious in my reading plans. Maybe God will be gracious and I'll have the time and discipline to finish them all...

1. We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry by G.K. Beale

2. The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright

3. Death By Love: Letters from the Cross by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears

4. Total Church: A Radical Reshaping Around Gospel and Community by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis

5. John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace by Jonathan Aitken

6. Communion with the Triune God by John Owen

7. Moby Dick by Herman Melville

I was encouraged recently that technical exegesis is not truly reading. It is common for Biblical Scholars to get so caught up in the details of exegesis that they forget how to read literature AS literature.

Top 10 Books I've Read this Year (In no particular order)

2008-12-03T21:00:00.000-08:00

A lot of bloggers tend to give a "Top 10" list at the end of the year. While I am in no way a consistent blogger, I've read quite a few books in the last year both for personal edification and for school. I thought I would post the top 10 from this past year with a run down on each one. So, here goes:

1. Isaiah's New Exodus in Mark by Rikki Watts:

This book has literally revolutionized how I see not only the gospels but also Biblical Theology in general. It's a quite technical read but is worth the effort in order to understand Jesus' significance and to feed your faith!

2. The Temple and the Church's Mission by G.K. Beale:

If you're not familiar with the writings of Dr. Beale, you need to get familiar as quickly as possible! While also on the technical side, Beale gives a maximalist account of Biblical Theology in light of the Temple theme. Has massive implications for how we read the Bible and how we function as a Church.

3. When I Don't Desire God by John Piper:

This MAY be the best book that John Piper has ever written on the Christian life. It combines his robust theology of Christian Hedonism with the practical nuts and bolts of striving after God to enjoy Him even while our passions are pathetically weak.

4. The Peacemaker by Ken Sande:

I had the privilege of reading through this great book this summer in a couples bible study at my church. It is ostensibly a book on Biblical conflict resolution (which it is) but it has much wider implications for my life than simply conflict resolution. This is really a manual on how to apply the Gospel to every relationship in your life!

5. The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin:

While I have read portions of the Institutes before this year, I was able this fall, to read through the entire institutes over the course of a semester. It has been breathtaking to see the broad-brush overview of Calvin's thought. It has also served to reinforce in my mind the dictum that there is nothing new under the sun! Most if not all of the controversies that Calvin was involved with in his day have some sort of contemporary representation among the theological challenges to Orthodox, Reformed teaching.

6. God Crucified by Richard Bauckham:

All I can say about this book is "WOW!" In such a short book Bauckham manages to weave an incredible picture of Jesus' divinity in light of OT and first century Jewish thought. This is not a dry scholarly work, it will feed your faith and cause you to worship Jesus in new and greater ways!

7. Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics by Graeme Goldsworthy:

Extremely helpful for seeing how the entire Bible relates to Jesus. This is not simplistic I-See-Jesus in every passage of the Old Testament. The Gospel message about Jesus Christ is not simply the result of our Biblical Interpretation, it is also the grounds of our interpretation!

8. The Mission of God by Christopher J.H. Wright:

I technically read this book last fall but I'm including it here because I'm beginning to take my college guys small group through it this year. This is probably one of my top 5 all time books. If you haven't read it, you need to... 'Nuff said!

9. The Glory of the Atonement edited by Charles Hill and Frank James:

A collection of Biblical and Theological essays defending a classic penal-substitutionary view of the atonement. Extremely helpful for clarifying the discussion of the atonement. Most of the authors in the work see penal-substitution as the central facet of the atonement but also have a healthy understanding that it is not the only facet of the atonement that the Bible presents.

10. How to Pray for Your Wife by Mark Weathers:

This is a 31 day devotional guide intended to help men pray for their wives by using... what else... Proverbs 31! While I can't stand behind all of his exegesis of Prov 31, his suggestions on prayer for wives are extremely helpful. God has used this to help me be more faithful in praying for Katie.

Spiritual Leadership

2008-11-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

A proper understanding of spiritual leadership is an urgent necessity in the Church today. Ours is a culture in which there is both a lack of mature leadership and in which leadership principles and values have been so inverted that much of what is said and written about leadership is of no value to the leaders of the Church. However, in spite of these deficiencies, there has been a broad movement within the American Church to incorporate the values of Corporate or Political America into the Church. Thus, sadly, many Pastors have become no more than CEO’s of the Church and frequently lack the Biblical qualifications to lead and pastor a flock of Christians. As Paul makes starkly clear in 1 Cor 1-2, the wisdom of God will be foolishness to the world. The converse is true as well that what the world considers wise will be seen as foolish in the sight of God. What the Church needs is the robust and glorious vision of spiritual leadership that is given across the pages of the New Testament. This vision will be radically counter-cultural and subversive in as much as it takes the Cross as its foundation with the goal of bringing all of life under the gentle dominion of Christ. Therefore, I want to try to elucidate the marks and purpose of spiritual leadership and trace out how these aspects work themselves out in the context of the Church body.

A helpful place in the New Testament to begin is in the book of Titus where Paul writes to a younger pastor with instructions on how the Church is to function and how the Elders are to fit into the body of believers. In Titus 1:6-9, Paul lays out the qualifications that must be in a man’s life in order for them to serve as an Elder in the Church. He writes,

“…if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. For an overseer, as God’s steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.”

When compared with the similar list of Elder qualifications in 1 Tim 3:1-7, the picture that emerges is the Elder as the ideal mature Christian. All of the qualities that are prescribed by Paul for Elders are qualities that every Christian is exhorted towards at various places in the New Testament. Thus the Elder is one who evidences in his life the maturity towards which all Christians are called and exhorted. Obviously, this does not mean that an Elder must be a sinlessly perfect Christian. That is impossible on this side of the final resurrection. However, it does mean that the Elder is an exemplar of a mature Christian who, empowered by God’s grace and in constant dependence on the Spirit, perseveres in the process of sanctification.

The overarching characteristic that Paul seems to be concerned with, particularly in Titus, is that spiritual leaders be “above reproach”. The importance of this defining quality is not concerned as much with personal piety as it is with God’s reputation. Paul seems to be concerned with God’s reputation in the world in the course of his letter to Titus; a concern that makes a great deal of sense in light of the cultural context in which Titus ministered. Every part of the body of Christ is supposed to conduct themselves both in and out of the Church so that “they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior”. God’s reputation or glory in the world is the primary reason for the existence of the Church and so they must naturally conduct themselves in such a way that reflects God’s ultimate beauty and worth to the world. This purpose aligns perfectly with Jesus’ words in Matt 5:14-16,

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

If this is the purpose of Christ’s people here on Earth, then it is necessary that their leaders be models of such a life that is above reproach. Put another way, the life of the Spiritual leader is meant to be a model of treasuring God and being ultimately concerned with the cause of His glory on the Earth. John Piper sums this concept up well when he writes, “The ultimate goal of all spiritual leadership is that other people might come to glorify God, that is, might so feel and think and act as to magnify the true character of God.”

Therefore spiritual leaders must model this overriding concern for God’s glory. However, this is not the full extent of the need for spiritual leaders. There is much good that can be done from having a good model but there is still something lacking if there is not teaching that accompanies this model. I believe this is the thrust of Paul’s command to Titus in Titus 2:1, “But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine.” Following this injunction, Paul goes on to describe the proper fruit that should be in place in the lives of Christians in different segments of society so that they will not bring reproach to the name of Jesus. This leads to the conclusion, supported elsewhere in the New Testament as well, that right living flows from right teaching. If the Church has teachers who are carefully teaching people the Word of God, lifting high the glory of God and showing people God’s redemptive purpose to fill the Earth with His glory as the waters cover the seas, then people will be gripped by such visions and live lives in accordance with that teaching. Therefore, both the modeling and the teaching are essential functions of a spiritual leader.

To many, the idea of the glory of God may sound rather abstract and many teachers aid this unfortunate misunderstanding in their teaching. Paul was clearly not one who would have left God’s glory as a mere theological abstraction. As Luther so forcefully emphasized, good pastors and teachers must be theologians of the Cross. If pastors and teachers want their people to come to grasp the glory of God and its full implications they must learn to bring people before the Cross which is the brightest and fullest display of God’s glory possible in this created order. In 1 Cor 1-2, Paul makes it clear that it was his mission to preach Christ and Him crucified and not to tickle people’s ears with rhetorical niceties. Such preaching was not hip and fashionable but was a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to those in the Greco-Roman world. However, Paul’s was not simply a teacher of the message of the Cross, it was a daily reality of his life. He tells the Corinthians in 2 Cor 3:8-12,

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.”

So, we see that Paul’s very life was cruciform. He both modeled and taught the message of the Cross. Both his manner and his speech were mutually beneficial so that the glory of God through the Cross of Christ would be most fully and powerfully evident among those to whom he ministered.

The message of the Cross, which mediates God’s glory to us is what, people are in most desperate need of. Therefore, it should be the chief goal of all spiritual leaders to lead their lives and conform their speech to God’s redemptive purposes through the Cross. This is how true spiritual leadership is to be exercised; it models the example of Christ who “came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

HHCM?

2008-11-11T06:37:00.000-08:00

Check out the just complete sermon series "The Peasant Princess" from Mars Hill Church. This is the goal of the series of messages:

Pretty worthwhile huh? My name is Scott Newman and I approve this message.

Meaning, Postmodern Theory and the Glory of Jesus

2008-11-04T18:04:00.000-08:00

This is another paper which I wrote this semester dealing with the topic of hermeneutics. This was also written for Dr. John Walton at Wheaton College Graduate School. As always, comments are welcome as I want to continue to grow and mature in this area of my thinking.

Hermeneutics: The Glory of God in Meaning

According to Anthony Thistleton, “Hermeneutics denotes critical reflection upon processes of interpretation and understanding, especially the interpretation of biblical texts or texts that originate from within other cultures.” Thus the science and art of hermeneutics deals with the epistemological underpinnings of the process of interpretation as well as the methodological processes by which the interpreter will seek meaning in a given text. To many, the process of self-critical reflection upon the act of reading and interpreting may seem like intellectual and academic overkill. In the case of contemporary literature, this critique may be appropriate although it still reflects a certain naiveté about the nature of discourse, communication and meaning. However, when one comes to the Biblical text by which the interpreter is separated chronologically by the span of 2000-3500 years, linguistically by the difficulty of learning and understanding Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic and culturally by the immense differences in thought and worldview, the possibility of simply reading and interpreting correctly becomes problematic. In light of these barriers to understanding, having a well though out and epistemologically grounded approach to interpretation is essential for faithful interpretation, particularly when it comes to the text of Scripture. Therefore, I will seek to argue for the supremacy and sovereignty of Jesus Christ as the basis by which interpretation and appropriation of the Biblical text is possible followed by a brief sketch of an epistemologically humble, methodological approach to Scripture.

As has been said previously, the goal of hermeneutics as applied to the Biblical text is faithful interpretation and appropriation of its content. Interpretation and appropriation both relate to knowledge since knowledge is what is sought in interpretation and is a necessary ingredient for the process of appropriation. Therefore, epistemology bears greatly on the subject of hermeneutics. This is especially so when it comes to discussions of meaning about which no clear consensus exists in the philosophical or literary community. The nature of meaning and how texts “mean” are issues that have filled volumes at least since the time of Socrates and Plato and show no signs of abating in the scholarly literature any time soon. In the face of such lack of understanding regarding meaning, one wonders if it is possible humanly to account for the phenomenon of meaning in a text or communication. It is at this point that I take Derrida’s critique of modernity to have been successful.

Derrida begins by addressing himself to the issue of structure within modern thought. These structures, or meta-narratives as Lyotard termed them , are the means by which humans make sense of the world around them. Language, Philosophy and Theology all fall under the category of structure in Derrida’s thinking. Every structure is held together by what is termed a “center”. According to Derrida, “The function of this center was not only to orient, balance, and organize the structure… but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the play of the structure.” However, while also being the integral part of a given structure, the center is also an element that is outside the structure and thus governs how much play is possible within the structure. “Thus it has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which, while governing the structure, escapes structurality.” This very idea upon which the structures or meta-narratives of modernity rest is fundamentally incoherent in that the center cannon simultaneously be both within and without a structure. In order to manage this incoherence there must be a sign-center substitution in order to try to maintain stability in the structure. Because of this Derrida writes, “it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center, that the center could not be thought in the form of a present-being, that the center had no natural site, that it was not a fixed locus but a function, a sort of nonlocus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play.”

It is this infinite-regress in substitutions of signs for center that ultimately makes meaning, humanly speaking, impossible to get at. There is a constant deferring of sign for signifier by which language and meaning, for all intents and purposes, is broken. Now, at this stage, it is important to grasp what Derrida, and those postmodern theorists who followed him, is saying and is not saying. He is not saying that there is no “world out there” or that truth and meaning do not exist. His critique does not amount to a denial of absolute truth. It is rather as Lyotard put it, “incredulity toward the meta-narrative”, the inability to access or know that we have access whatever is real. Fish writes of this, “this is not say that the world apart from the devices of human conception and perception doesn’t exist ‘out there’; just that what we know of the world follows from what we can say about it rather than from any unmediated encounter with it in and of itself.” What this amounts to is a recognition of brokenness or, might we say, fallenness in the ways that we as humans access reality. The postmodern posture then is not to nihilistically reject the meaningfulness of everything in life but rather to work within the broken systems while simultaneously recognizing their brokenness. It is impossible for humans to have an unmediated access to reality and therefore it is impossible for humans to escape the systems or meta-narratives with which we make sense of the world.

Theologically, it appears that Derrida and the postmodern theorists have stumbled onto an astounding realization, namely the fallenness of the creation. The Bible makes it clear throughout but particularly in the New Testament that the fallenness of the creation extends not only to the physical realm but also the metaphysical realm. In the realm of human thought, Theologians have termed this phenomenon the “noetic effects of sin” . The implication of this is that humanity should not be able to understand anything rightly, communication and knowing should not happen. Yet, experience alone tells us that meaning does happen. I am able to sit down to dinner and have a conversation with my wife in which we can (most of the time) understand each other. I can read a text and grasp the basic content contained therein. Ultimately there is no human way to adequately account for this phenomenon; the answer must be theological. In Colossians 1:16-17 Paul writes, “For by him (Christ) all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Typically, this statement by Paul is thought of in the physical sense that Christ is the Creator and Sustainer of all that we see, interact with and experience. However, creation was not simply the physical realm but the metaphysical realm as well. Therefore, because Christ wills it, the universe holds together and does not fly apart and also, because Christ wills it, metaphysical reality still works despite its fallenness.

That knowing, communication and meaning still happen should be viewed as a work of common grace, by which glory must be given to Jesus. Indeed, Jesus Christ is the logos or wisdom of God and the Scriptures take great pains to help us understand that Truth is no mere metaphysical abstraction, it is a person; Jesus Christ, the perfect image by which we know the Triune God. Truth is not merely an attribute of God as if Truth was some sort of abstract that stands over and against God; He is rather Truth Itself!

This understanding has immense implications for how we, as Evangelical Christians, approach Biblical interpretation. The systems which man has set up in order to make sense of texts are all broken and unable to account for meaning. Meaning is located in the Triune God as He has manifested Himself in the person of Jesus Christ. It is the role of the person of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity to overcome man’s fallenness and lift the veil from our eyes to see God rightly in the person of Christ, the Word of God. There is, therefore, hope in interpretation because the Bible is the Written Word of God which corresponds precisely to the Living Word of God. The Spirit can be expected to overcome the noetic effects of sin and allow us to accurately understand the person of God on the pages of Scripture because that is how the Father has chosen to reveal the Triune God to us. It is not in hermeneutical systems but in the working of the Spirit of God then that we must place our trust for confidence in interpretation.

However, it is impossible for us to function interpretively outside of a hermeneutical system and so we can have confidence that the Spirit will work through our broken systems in order to bring us to a knowledge of and relationship with God. Therefore, I wish to briefly propose some methodological considerations to help us as interpreters come to the Biblical text and pray for God’s Spirit to allow us to understand the meaning of the text of Scripture.

First, I propose that what we are seeking when it comes to Biblical interpretation is/are completed speech-act/acts. According to Speech-Act Theory as laid out by Kevin Vanhoozer, a speech act involves a locution, illocution and perlocution. The locution is the mechanical act or content of communication, i.e. the text or the act and words of speaking. The illocution refers to the intentionality that the communicator invests in the locution. Finally, the perlocution refers to the effect that the locution and illocution have on the recipient of the speech act. A speech act is successful when each of the components has been successful.

Interestingly enough, this tri-partite structure corresponds to each of the three aspects of interpretation: author, text and reader. A text is a locution, it is the content that is being communicated. The author is the one who invests intentionality in a text and the reader is the one who receives the communication and is affected by it according to the intention of the author. It is because of this that interpretation cannot focus on merely one component of a speech act; it involves a triangulation of all three elements in order to get at meaning. A functional definition of meaning then can be understood as Vanhoozer puts it, “’Meaning’ is the result of communicative action, of what an author has done in tending to certain words at a particular time in a specific manner.” In light of this, a faithful approach to interpretation will then seek a triangulation of these three components.

In addition, a faithful approach to interpretation should begin from the ground up with a healthy recognition of the place and necessity of presuppositions in the interpretive process. For Christians, the gospel is the most basic presupposition which accurately understands Christ’s mediatorial role in the interpretation of the Bible and, indeed, of all reality. This should not be mistaken as a license to impose our theology on the text and to thus run roughshod over it. Rather, it is viewing the hermeneutical spiral as something that is good and God-ordained to help us in the process of interpretation. Our theology gives us a grid with which to make sense of the Biblical text and then the detailed, ground-up exegetical work in the text re-shapes our theology where it is not completely faithful to Scripture. This balancing process leads to exegesis that is properly shaped by the Gospel and Theology that is properly shaped by exegesis.

Finally, the process of ground-up interpretation is not completed until a text is viewed in its full, canonical context. In other words, if all of scripture is Christo-telic and history is unified by God’s sovereign plan to redeem the creation through the work of Christ then each text of scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, is not fully interpreted by us as Christians until we grasp how the trajectories in the text point us towards Christ and the Gospel. As Christians, this should not be an optional step to add to the end of the interpretive process; it is essential for our Biblical understanding as God’s covenant people. I do not deny that every passage in the Old Testament had authority for the Old Testament community when it was originally written. However, for Christians living on this side of the Cross, our appropriation of texts in the Old Testament must be done in light of the Christo-telic trajectories present in the text.

For Christians living at this period of history, the interpretive times are extremely confusing. The implosion of modernity and the postmodern turn are events which have sent shock-waves through the world and affect anyone engaged in interpretation of any kind. Ultimately, the anchor to which we must fasten ourselves as systems rise and fall is Christ. Mankind is desperately quick to latch on to and seek security in interpretive fads but God is the only true source of security and stability in the process of interpretation. Therefore, I think it is appropriate to emphasize again that God through Christ by the working of the Spirit needs to get all the credit and glory for our knowing and communicating just as we give Him glory for our breath and our salvation.

Bibliography

Briggs, Richard S. “Speech-Act Theory.” Pages 763-766 in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House Company, 2005.

Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Translated by Alan Bass; Chicago, IL.: The University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Fish, Stanley. “French Theory in America.” No Pages. Cited 9 September 2008. Online: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/french-theory-in-america/.

Goldsworthy, Graeme. Gospel- Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpreation. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2006.

Goldsworthy, Graeme. Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000.

Gracia, Jorge J.E. “Meaning.” Pages 492-499 in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House Company, 2005.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Theory and History of Literature 10. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Newbigin, Lesslie. Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995.

Thisleton, Anthony C. “Hermeneutics.” Pages 283-287 in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House Company, 2005.

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2002.

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. Is There a Meaning in This Text: The Bible, The Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998.

Vanhoozer, Kevin J. “Lost in Interpretation: Truth Scripture and Hermeneutics.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48/1 (2005): 89-114.

Preaching the Old Testament as Christian Scripture

2008-11-04T17:54:00.000-08:00

This is a paper that I recently wrote for Dr. John Walton at Wheaton College Graduate School on how to preach and teach from the Old Testament. Please be aware that much of this was footnoted in the copy I turned in to Dr. Walton. Unfortunately, I'm not able to bring these over into a blog post. If anyone happens to read this I would love to get feedback. God Bless!!

Preaching the Old Testament as Christian Scripture

Since the inception of the Holy Spirit’s New Covenant ministry, the Church has been characterized by the proclamation of God’s message of salvation through the written Word of God. Throughout the narratives of Acts, the apostles are shown to preach the gospel wherever they go. Interestingly, as they proclaim the good news of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, the apostles preach on the basis of Old Testament texts and frequently cite the Old Testament as they describe the work that Christ has accomplished. This pattern continues into the New Testament epistles where we find the apostles laying down doctrine and exhorting local congregations by citing the Old Testament. It goes without saying that, in the Apostolic period, much of New Testament scripture had not yet been penned and those works that had been penned were not in wide circulation. Thus, we find the apostles supporting their message about Jesus Christ from the Old Testament scriptures. In comparison to the period of Apostolic preaching, today there is a sad neglect of the Old Testament in the Church’s teaching and preaching. I believe that this situation derives from two primary factors; a lack of understanding how to faithfully interpret the Old Testament and secondly, an inability to apply the Old Testament to the lives of New Covenant Christians. Therefore, what the Church needs is a recovery of the ability to exegete the Old Testament scriptures in their original historical, literary and theological context followed by the ability to fully articulate the theological significance of Old Testament pericopae as they pertain to Christians living under the New Covenant. The act of proclamation is thus the fruit and culmination of the process of careful exegesis and theological development.

Ideally, the full process of exegesis should undergird the act of preaching or teaching an Old Testament pericope. The preacher thus should go through the process of examining the literary aspects of the text from the top down. Issues of genre and rhetorical strategy need to have particular importance at this stage for a proper contextual understanding of the passage. Once this stage has been completed then the preacher should examine the exegetical details of the passage. This would include the process of lexical and syntactical studies, discourse analysis as well as any historical background issues that may affect the interpretation.

Expository preaching that works systematically through a book of the Old Testament is ideally suited for such an exegetical approach as all these steps are necessary for understanding the Biblical book in its entirety as well as relating each preached pericope to the message and rhetorical thrust of the work as a whole. However, even when preaching solitary sermons on a text or topical studies that center on one or two passages of scripture, it is necessary to engage in the whole process; even if to a lesser extent. The goal in this exegetical process is to understand the message in the text in the way that the original author and the original recipients would have understood it. It is by this triangulation of the three points of the hermeneutical spectrum; author, text and reader that the preacher can maintain his link to meaning as we best understand it. Unless one goes through the labor of understanding the details of the text, he is cut off from the authority inherent in the message that the Holy Spirit inspired into the text.

While the exegetical work in the text is certainly foundational and indispensable to the enterprise of interpretation in order to maintain the link to inspiration and the authority of the Holy Spirit; it is not the last word when it comes to the interpretive process. Revelation was given to us so that we might know God and His ways and plans more fully. In this way, the text of Scripture is no mere historical artifact; it is the authoritative revelation of the God with whom the Church is in Covenant relationship. Therefore, for our knowledge about God and His ways and purposes is to be authoritative, it must be based on what is communicated about Him through the text of Scripture. In this way, the interpretive process must not be satisfied only with the historical exegesis; it must press on to the theological dimension.

The first aspect of the theological dimension relates directly to what the text under examination for preaching communicates about God. Every text, in some way or another, will communicate something to us of the character or purpose of God. Even texts where there may be a conspicuous absence of direct mention of God may lead us to greater understanding of His providential ways of governing the world and its systems. It is important, therefore, to understand that this first aspect of theological reflection flows directly from the pericope at hand.

However, just as historical exegesis is not the stopping point for interpretation but necessarily leads into the theological process, the theology which is explicitly drawn from the exegetical detail work in the text is the foundation for further theological reflection across the canon to understand God’s ways and purposes in the full light of progressive revelation. This is especially true when it comes to the task of preaching. It is important and necessary to demonstrate how there are trajectories in every OT text that find their telos in Christ and His salvific work on behalf of God’s people. Thus this step is, in a sense, a bridge between the theological reflection stage and application stage for the Church. While it is true that the Old Testament texts contain knowledge about God that is true and authoritative on its own, Christians living in the New Covenant era inaugurated by Christ’s death, burial, resurrection and ascension cannot end the theological process merely with grasping a texts original theological significance. Any knowledge of God at this stage of redemptive history is mediated by Christ who is YHWH revealed to us in the flesh and who represents the culmination of God’s saving work on behalf of His people.

Sidney Greidanus has done much work on how to preach the Old Testament scripture Christianly in a hermeneutically responsible way. He outlines six broad ways in which the Old Testament texts can find their telos in Christ. Each of these ways is gleaned from ways in which the New Testament authors are shown to understand and interpret the Old Testament texts in light of the Christ event. These include the way of redemptive-historical progression, promise-fulfillment, typology, analogy, longitudinal themes, and contrast. Thus, any text can be shown to have trajectories that lead to Christ’s work in at least one or possible several of these ways. It is by careful understanding of redemptive history and the careful application of these categories based on an accurate exegesis of the text that safeguards the theological process from fanciful conclusions. It can thus be said that for Christians, the Old Testament is to be understood to have its own authority as it did for the Covenant community in the OT. Now, in addition, it also has authority in as much as it provides the categories by which we understand the culmination of YHWH’s saving and redeeming work through Jesus Christ.

Once the detailed work of exegesis and the Christo-telic theological reflection are completed, it is important for a preacher to grasp how to apply the text and its accompanying theology to the gathered Church. Unfortunately, preaching in the contemporary, Evangelical church is often shallow and moralizing to the extent that much of Western Christianity is theologically impoverished and legalistic. Western Christians are so pragmatically driven that unless they have an “action step” to take home with them from a Sunday service, they feel that the preacher has not made application. Against this, it must be asserted that having our view of God enlarged is certainly a sure starting point for application if not a sufficient application in and of itself! Seeing the grandeur and sovereignty of YHWH played out across the OT narratives and beautifully expressed in the prophetic and poetic books should be enough to move the Church to worship. In this way, the process of theological reflection based on the exegesis of the passage is directly applicable to New Covenant believers.

In addition, I believe that it is possible to preach ethics from the Old Testament in a hermeneutically responsible and non-legalistic manner. Unfortunately, the vast majority of preaching from the Old Testament in the American church, which attempts to focus on ethics, tends to try to exhort Christians from the moral examples of the characters portrayed in the OT. The sad fact of such preaching is that it gives people a standard, whether real or fabricated, without the accompanying theological motivation necessary for the ethic to not be legalistic. Whenever right action is done from improper motivation, it is just as sinful as doing the wrong action. However, anything done from the motivation of wanting to see God’s Name honored through Christ will be pleasing to God. Therefore, the Church needs to recover a theocentric approach to ethics.

In addition to gaining a proper motivation for honoring God through preaching His glory from the Old Testament, there needs to be an accompanying emphasis on the Gospel. It is through the work of the Spirit which was purchased by Christ’s atoning and victorious death on the Cross that Christians are able to live lives that honor God by exalting His glory. It is ultimately in the Gospel that Christians find the proper motivation and necessary power to please God in their lives. This primacy of the Gospel in the Christian life is what necessitates the Christo-telic interpretation of the Old Testament. Unless Christians are continually brought back to the Gospel or shown how Old Testament texts culminate in the Gospel, any ethical exhortation a preacher makes will be in danger of producing legalism in the life of the congregation.
It is through the process of top-down and bottom-up exegesis and canonical theological reflection that is based in the exegesis of the text that we can see preaching and teaching as the culmination of the entire interpretive process. It is essential to recognize that each of these elements must be in place in order to maintain our link to scripture which is the authoritative, inspired Word of God. However, there is no value in the detailed exegetical work or theological process unless it produces fruit for the sake of the Church. These texts were meant to be understood and God was meant to be seen for the sake of His Covenant community of which we are a part. In addition, we must also remember that each step of the process of preparation for teaching and preaching needs to be done in conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit. As the One at Work to inspire the texts of scripture, it is through his agency that our hermeneutical models and ways of drawing application from the text will ultimately be successful.

Bibliography

Broyles, Craig C., Editor. Interpreting the Old Testament: A Guide for Exegesis. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.

Chapell, Bryan. Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon. Second Edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005.

Chisholm, Robert B. From Exegesis to Exposition: A Practical Guide to Using the Hebrew Bible. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998.

Goldsworthy, Graeme. Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Academic, 2006.

----------------------. Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2000.

Greidanus, Sidney. Preaching Christ from the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999.

----------------------. The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text: Interpreting and Preaching Biblical Literature. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988.

Stuart, Douglas. Old Testament Exegesis: A Handbook for Students and Pastors. Third Edition. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001.

Back to Britain

2008-08-12T20:04:00.000-07:00

I liked this enough that I thought I would co-opt it for my rarely updated blog!

Britain is Repossessing the U.S.A. ----A Message from John Cleese

To the citizens of the United States of America:

"In light of your failure to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately."

"Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas ,which she does not fancy)."

"Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed."

"To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. "You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary, then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. "The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

3. "Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn your original national anthem, 'God Save The Queen'.

4. "July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday."

5. "You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns,lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

6. "Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. "All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

8. "All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

9. "The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.

10. "You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

11. "The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of British Commonwealth - see what it did for them.

12. "Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie McDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

13. "You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will,in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don't try Rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.

14. "Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

15. "You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

16. "An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

17. "Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in season."

"God save the Queen."

ht: Ben Witherington

Left Behind?

2008-07-22T20:20:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize that Billy Graham was coming back for me???

Wordle

2008-06-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

I just wordled one of my paper's from this past semester. I wrote it for my atonement class and entitled it "Glory, Love and Justice". See if you can figure out what I wrote about ;-)

title="Wordle: Glory, Love and Justice"> src="http://wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/08850/Glory%2C_Love_and_Justice"
style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd"
>

My Wife

2008-04-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

If you know my wife, then you know that this picture describes her pretty well. Starbucks and reading (esp. Piper books) sum her up pretty well :-) I love you Baby!

Book Review: Isaiah's New Exodus in Mark

2008-03-31T11:01:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading Isaiah's New Exodus in Mark by Rikki Watts, now a professor at Regent College in Vancouver, BC. Anyone who has the technical ability to wade through the Greek and Hebrew references will glean pure gold from this work! It has opened my eyes to understanding the Gospels as well as the ministry of Jesus in a Biblical-Theological framework. I'm including my review which I wrote for my Exegesis of Mark class. Hopefully this can whet your appetite for more to come!

Isaiah's New Exodus on Amazon.com

Introduction:
Given the rise of literary criticism as a sub-discipline of Biblical Studies and the resurgence of interest in theological interpretation, there has been a greatly renewed interest in the Gospels in their final, canonical form. With regards to the Gospel of Mark, this new scholarly climate has resulted in greater attention and debate as to Mark’s overall literary organization and the bearing that it has for Mark’s Biblical Theology. It is into this milieu that Rikki Watts has presented Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark. His central thrust is that Mark has structured his gospel account in order to demonstrate that Jesus, in His life, ministry, death and resurrection, fulfilled the long standing Jewish hope of a New Exodus and consequent end to exile that had been promised in the Prophet Isaiah. Thus, Jesus both stands in continuity with and yet redefines the hopes that Israel had been carrying with her for centuries.

Argument of the Book:
Watts begins his studying with an examination of the major literary-theological works on the Gospel of Mark in the past 50 years. He is careful in each instance to note the important contributions and insights that each author has into Mark but also demonstrates that each author comes up short when trying to see a unified way in which Mark structures his gospel and draws on Old Testament imagery. One constant motif that emerges again and again in the surveyed literature is the theme of Exodus and the noted use of Exodus imagery in the Gospel. Watts notes that these authors are successful in demonstrating a link to the Exodus at individual points in the Gospel but are less compelling when they attempt to see an overarching Exodus structure. Although he hints as his solution to this difficulty, namely that Mark makes use of the Exodus motif in as much as it was reinterpreted in Isaiah 40-66, he saves this assertion for a later point in his work.

From his survey of previous works on Mark, he proceeds to articulate a hermeneutic that he argues Mark has made use of in bringing the OT to bear on his narrative. Through a detailed analysis of Ideology as expressed in the discipline of Sociology, he explains that a community will maintain its identity and self-understanding based on continuous reference to what he calls its unique founding moment. Based on this unique founding moment, an author may make textual allusions that are designed to make the reader recall a whole historical, sociological grid. He writes, “I suggest that his (Mark’s) ‘grand piano’ is a schematized interpretive ‘map’ of Israel’s ‘history’ and that his OT part-citations or allusions may function as ‘grid references’ to that map which gives expression and order to Israel’s interpretation of her history, namely the OT.” In light of this understanding and the often observed influence of Isaiah 40-55 on Mark, Watts proceeds to examine the gospel to see how Mark’s use of OT citations, allusions and imagery may shed light on the structure of Mark’s gospel.

Particularly key for Watts’ argument is the function of the opening conflated citation of Isaiah 40:3 and Malachi 3:1 in Mk 1:2-3. Isaiah 40 introduces his New Exodus (NE) schema that is developed throughout the remained of the book. He argues that the Malachi 3 portion of the citation functions as a development of Isaiah’s NE expectation that serves to explain why his NE has been delayed. Together, they form a controlling ‘grid reference’ by which the reader is alerted to the interpretive framework that Mark is attempting to develop and argue for through his narrative. Watts writes,

“for Mark the long-awaited coming of Yahweh as King and Warrior has begun, and with it, the inauguration of Israel’s eschatological comfort: her deliverance from the hands of the nations, the journey of her exiles to their home and their eventual arrival at Jerusalem, the place of Yahweh’s presence.”

This editorial citation functions according to the norm of ancient literature in which such a citation establishes the conceptual framework for the remainder of the work.
The bulk of the rest of Watt’s book serves to demonstrate how looking at Mark from the perspective of the fulfillment of an INE schema serves to make better sense of Mark’s structure than previous proposals and ultimately demonstrates that, at least for Mark, Jesus’ ministry was the culmination of the long-awaited hopes of YHWH’s deliverance of Israel although in Jesus both Israel and their hope are drastically redefined. Watts, along with many other commentators, sees two major breaks in the Gospel’s narrative at 8:21-27 and 10:45-11:1 which would divide the book into a three part structure consisting of Jesus’ ministry in which He preaches and performs miracles, Jesus leading His blind and deaf disciples along a ‘way’ and finally an arrival in Jerusalem. According to Watts, this structure

“displays broad parallels with the INE schema of A) Yahweh’s deliverance and healing of his exiled people, B) a journey where ‘blind’ Israel is led along ‘a way they do not know’, and C) arrival in Jerusalem.”

At each point in each of these three major sections, he is careful to demonstrate how the major features of the narrative demonstrate are consistent with a NE hermeneutic and how such a hermeneutic lends a hand in helping solve difficult interpretive questions in the work.
Finally, Watts concludes his study with a chapter in which he recognizes the limitations or temptations of such a study to make all the evidence fit within the desire schema. So, in good critical realist fashion, he sets forth the Theory of Consilience and the criterion of simplicity from the Philosophy of Science in an effort to justify his study. So, while he admits that he may not be completely convincing at every stage of his argument for a controlling NE framework for Mark’s gospel, it “leads to a greater degree of consilience than any other literary theory yet proposed for Mark in that it explains and integrates a large number of previously separate classes of recognized phenomena.”

Evaluation:
Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark is, I believe, a masterful and well argued study of Mark’s Gospel which seems to shed light on its narrative technique as well as the Biblical Theology that it sets forth. Watts displays a great degree of skill in both Greek and Hebrew exegesis and appears to be knowledgeable about nearly every major secondary source on the Gospel of Mark extant at the time of his writing (his bibliography is nearly 45 pages long!). He brings these skills together to weave a convincing picture of what Mark is up to in his gospel.

It could be argued that at times Watts does cook his evidence to fit into a NE schema. Indeed, when at an exegetical or theological impasse, a reference to Mark’s controlling INE framework seems to be, at least for him, what would tip the scales of interpretation in favor of his hermeneutic. So, in these instances, his arguments can become admittedly circular, a fact which he appears to recognize as he writes his final conclusion to the work. However, it should be noted again that this study does not rise or fall on individual interpretations of events and pericopae. The strength of his argument is that it seems to better fit the evidence than any other scheme that that has yet been proposed. He recognizes that there are other OT themes and motifs at work in the gospel other than a NE one and so he shows appropriate scholarly humility in holding individual interpretations loosely. What is important for him is that the INE motif provides the “conceptual framework” for the narrative.

One area in which I wish Watts could have been clearer was in his assertion that Jesus’ ministry was, at least for Mark, the fulfillment of the NE hope of Isaiah. However, it never seems to be defined clearly what he means by “fulfillment”. One wonders whether he understands to be Mark attempting to show a partial fulfillment, an inaugurated fulfillment or a final fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy. It seems that there are clues in the gospel that would lead one to see the events of Jesus’ ministry in Mark as an initial or “inaugurated” fulfillment and more careful nuancing on Watts’ part would have lead, I think, to an even larger theological payoff for the work in terms of helping to articulate a broader New Testament Theology.

Conclusion:

Isaiah’s New Exodus in Mark appears to be a groundbreaking study on Mark’s gospel which sheds much light on what is happening in the work from both a literary and a theological perspective. As I’m sure it already has been, I believe that it will continue to be a resource and base from which many scholars can penetrate further into the gospel in an attempt to mine the riches that are there for the Church. I pray that in this way, it will cause people to more fully appreciate the work that Christ did on Earth in His life, death and resurrection and bring the Church to stand in greater awe and worship of YHWH through His Servant, Jesus.

Why the Prosperity Gospel is not Gospel!

2008-03-04T14:02:00.000-08:00

Here's a powerful video showing John Piper explain why the "Prosperity Gospel" is not true gospel at all.

ht: Justin Taylor

Christmas Break!!!

2007-12-20T16:41:00.000-08:00

I am now officially on Christmas Break and it feels amazing! I don't think that I've ever longed for a Christmas break as much as I have this semester. My first semester at Wheaton has been so sweet and yet so challenging all at once. The Bible feels more real to me and God more majestic and awesome than I've felt for quite a while and for these things I'm so grateful to Him! But, this picture sums up pretty well how I feel right now:

So, on to Christmas Break! Katie and I leave early tomorrow morning for a week in California where we're absolutely excited to see our families, our church family at Copperhill and enjoy not worrying about snow! We're praying that it would be a sweet time of fellowship and that God would make us sad, again, to leave.

I'm hoping to do some intense reading over the break in order to get ready for next semester. My first project is to finish Jesus and the Victory of God by N.T. Wright. I'm actually considering starting it over since I think I would be all the more benefitted by it after this semester. Wright has some important things to say to the church and he seems to have become the force to be reckoned with in Biblical Scholarship.

Following that, if there even is a follow up to that, I would also like to finish The Temple and the Church's Mission by G.K. Beale, one of my professors at Wheaton. This book traces the Temple theme throughout scripture and then relates it to the purpose of the church at this stage of redemptive history. I think that this book has a lot of practical value in helping Christians to think theologically about the presence of God.

If I happen to have a few minutes to spare, I would also like to reacquaint myself with some of Milton's poetry. Milton is so refreshingly God-centered and his Biblical emphasis on discernment is something that is desperately needed in our contemporary theological and church climate. I love and advocate a "Missional" approach to ministry but so many people and ministries that claim the label "missional" are really just a sell out to our culture. We need to think about and engage our culture in a gloriously God-centered and countercultural way so that God is seen for who He is. I think Milton has a lot to say to us in this particular regard!

Maybe after all that I'll enjoy some fiction. I want to try and make sure that my mind doesn't become accustomed to reading only dense treatises. Fiction is good for the mind and helps us read the Bible in a more true-to-life manner. If anyone has some good suggestions for fiction, feel free to let me know!

Well, I pray that God blesses you all this Christmas Season with the knowledge and comfort that come from the amazing truth of the incarnation. I leave you with a quote from Daniel Fuller regarding the astonishing fact of God becoming man:

"Some idea of how much glory Jesus therefore lost in his incarnation can be found in the words of a well-known hymn that speaks of his leaving the "ivory palaces" and coming into a "world of woe." A helpful picture to have in mind is that of Jesus' descending a winding staircase stretching for a very long distance from the glory of heaven above far down into a world of wretched misery. Each downward stop in leaving this glory increased the pain Jesus underwent to pay for our sins, and so a good part of the severity of the punishment Jesus suffered for us consisted in coming down this staircase, whose length cannot be exaggerated, since it spanned the infinite distance between the Creator and the creature."

-Daniel Fuller in Unity of the Bible

Snowy Morning

2007-12-05T06:32:00.000-08:00

I found this on Justin Taylor's blog and had to post it. Enjoy ;-)

Why Is Missional Important? Pt. 1

2007-08-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

There are many facets of the answer to the question I posed above but let me show you my cards beforehand and say: Missional theology and ministry is important because it gets the Gospel! If this is the case then the trendy label “missional” is at least an accurate description of a key aspect of our Biblical faith and at most an apt synonym for the entire package of Biblical Christianity.

Now, after making such a bold statement the question could legitimately be asked, “If Missional is a buzzword for Biblical Christianity then why the label?” Let me give some background: The modern missions movement begain in the late 1700’s when the renown Reformed Baptist and Father of Modern Missions, William Carey, departed England for India. As he went out and other western missionaries followed his example into the uttermost parts of the Earth they were all forced to come to grips with an aspect of the task they were entrusted with. That is, they were forced to deal with the phenomenon of Culture and in case anyone is wondering, 18^th century European and North American culture was in no way similar to the various cultures that met these pioneering missionaries as they spread out over the non-western world. And so, while the essential gospel message that these men and women taught was the same it took different shapes and forms in order to incarnate itself into the local culture. They had discovered essentially what Paul meant when he said:

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings

- 1 Corinthians 9:19-23 ESV

As time progressed, Missionaries became more and more skilled at incarnating the gospel into the various cultures to which they were sent and principles began to be developed on how to handle the difficult balance of being faithful to the message and theology of the Gospel and how to dress that message in the clothing of the local people. However, even while these developments were happening in missions, there was an neglect of these principles at home in the Western world. For a long time though, churches were able to continue to preaching and teaching in the ways that they always had while being oblivious to the culture because at its core, Western Society was still firmly rooted in an understanding of the gospel. Christians were oblivious to how to incarnate the gospel because, to a great extent, they didn’t need to.

However, with the increase in Philosophical Skepticism and the increasing advance of Cultural Postmodernism, we in the West are now living in a Post-Christian society and culture. The air we breathe is not the same air that even our Parents or Grandparents grew up breathing and this calls for new ways for the gospel to be articulated in order for it to be brought to bear on our culture. Basically, the Western church is now in desperate need of the incarnational principles that have been developed by missionaries and missions agencies serving in non-western contexts. However, now these ideas and principles are being applied at HOME. There is an enormous need for the church to be missionaries in OUR OWN CULTURE. This is where we get the term “missional”.

One thing I would like to point out is that the Church’s role as “missionaries” in it’s own culture is technically not a new development. This is what the Church has ALWAYS been called to and it is only because it has largely NEGLECTED this mission that we now find ourselves in a position where some who claim the name of Christ are actually hostile to this idea of incarnating the gospel into our own 21^st century Western Context. It is only because the fish worked hard enough to convince itself that it wasn’t living in water that it was surprised to wake up one morning feeling wet. But more on that tomorrow…

Filled by God

2007-08-21T17:38:00.000-07:00

To be filled with You, O God, what would be the cost?

Would it be the mocking and jesting of the multitude,

Or even the sacrifice of my flesh on the altar?

To be stripped, beaten; bruised, battered;

Ripped and torn, speared and skewered,

These are what my precious Lord demands of me?

Then let them be mine, with all the joy that there attends;

For I am not filled with I, but with Thee!

Joy in Thanksgiving

2007-08-21T17:29:00.000-07:00

This is from an article that I wrote for the Carey Baptist Church newsletter while I was in India. I know that our Thanksgiving/Holiday season is still a few months away but I hope that it can be profitable in preparing us mentally and spiritually for these occasions.

The Christian’s Delight in Thanksgiving

Scott Newman

“Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High… The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!”

-Psalm 50:14+23

In my home town, as the summer months give way to the cooler air and brighter colours of autumn a festive sprit begins to be felt among all the people. Then, as the calendar rolls on into the month of November, one can notice that all the markets and places of business begin to be decorated with the gorgeous hues of fallen leaves and cornucopias filled with delicious food. The holiday of Thanksgiving is then celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday, many people from all over the world celebrate Thanksgiving during the month of November when, traditionally, the farmers would finish gathering all their crops and villages would gather to celebrate the bountiful harvest and to praise God for His abundant provision for them. This time of year has, for many cultures, become a time to reflect on the blessings that have been bestowed on them during the past year.

In reflecting on the idea of Thanksgiving as a cultural event in many parts of the world, I began to wonder what the idea of Thanksgiving should mean for the Christian. There are many people all over the world who have not repented of their sins and live in peaceful fellowship with Christ who set aside time to be thankful for what they have. In my home town, often the Thanksgiving celebrations of the Christians differ very little from those who have no commitment to Christ whatsoever. This began to puzzle me as I thought about it. It seems that the motivations and the ways that at Christian gives thanks should be much different than the ways a non-Christian would give thanks. But how should this be? As I reflected on this apparent dilemma, I remembered Psalm 50; one of my favorite Psalms. I believe that a little reflection on what the Psalmist, Asaph, has to tell us here will change the way that many of us view and practice thanksgiving.

Asaph begins this psalm with a marvelous statement of the greatness and glory of our God. He speaks of God’s power in ruling creation, the light and perfection of His beauty, and His holy hatred towards sin. Then, God Himself begins to speak and condemns the Israelites for their sacrifices which they were offering to Him saying, “I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine. ‘If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.’” God is rebuking the Israelites for thinking that they were somehow helping Him out with their sacrifices. As the creator and sustainer of the Universe, everything belongs to God and so, when the Israelites would come and offer sacrifices, they were offering to God things that already belonged to Him. So then, if God already owned these things, then why would He command the Israelites to bring sacrifices to Himself? God enlightens us as to His purposes and desires for sacrifice saying, “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

What God requires from His people are hearts that are united to fear His name and that glorify Him in every aspect of daily life. It is from a heart that stands in awe of the beauty and greatness of God that true thanksgiving will pour out in a pure stream of thanksgiving. This is why the Psalmist speaks of the greatness of God in verses 1-3 of Psalm 50; because in order to have a heart that is thankful to God, we must first understand Him accurately. The essence of the glory of God is the display of His perfect and awesome character for the world to see. For a Christian to see and accurately understand God is the most joyful, soul-satisfying experience that is possible in this Universe. When a soul begins to taste of this heavenly joy and satisfaction, its life is radically transformed and it begins to desire nothing else than to praise God for His glory! And it is as this praise comes from the heart of a Christian that God’s glory is proclaimed in the world and He is mightily glorified in that. Biblically, this is what thanksgiving should look like; it should be a heart that is taken captive by the wonders of God’s grace towards us and His Sovereign Majesty and then simply wonders that God should choose to make these things abound towards us.

However, what I have often seen among Christians is that they begin to give thanks to God simply for the benefits and material things which He has graciously given to them. It is right that we should seek to praise and thank God for these things but it is often the case that this kind of thanksgiving replaces what we see God desiring from us in Psalm 50. The thanksgiving which He desires is a heart which has been overwhelmed by the greatness of God which saved it and desires nothing more than to sing His praises. Whenever we begin to praise God for His gifts rather than for the joy of who He is, this praise and thanksgiving becomes drudgery and the focus is shifted from the God who lovingly bestows His gifts in order to make Himself known to man who receives the gifts. The greatest delight then is then experienced by the one who has been moved by God to have the joy in His presence overflow in thanksgiving and praise.

This year, as Christians, let us ask that God would allow us to see Him and taste fellowship with Him from His Word in such as way that our thanksgiving flows out of us as the overflow of the incredible joy that we have in Him. The motivations for living our lives and the way we live our lives as Christians should be radically different from the world and this Biblical idea of thanksgiving is simply another way in which our lives, particularly during this time of year, should stand in such contrast to the world that they stand up and take notice of the difference that our delight in the greatness of God has brought into our lives.

We've Arrived!!!

2007-08-08T20:26:00.000-07:00

Well, after 3 days of long driving we've finally made it to our new home in the West Suburbs of Chicago!! We didn't end up having internet during the trip so I'm just now able to post some info. We stayed our first night in Grand Junction, CO and our second night in Lincoln, NE and then arrived in Wheaton tonight around 7:00 local time. We're enjoying Brian and Monica Gee's hospitality for a couple nights and then moving into our new apartment on Friday! Here's some pictures from the road for you to enjoy!

Katie In Utah

Utah Skyline at Night

Scott at the Colorado River in the Rockies

Us enjoying ourselves!!!!!

"We're finally in Illinois!!! Yeah!!!!!"

Chicago!!

2007-07-29T22:51:00.001-07:00

Only 8 Days Until We Leave for Chicago!!

The Rapture of Our Wills

2007-07-29T22:43:00.000-07:00

The realm of human love relationships is a very interesting one indeed! I speak from the perspective of a male because that is all I know. I know how a man goes about pursuing relationships and the things that delight us and the things that frustrate us. This perspective illustrates some important things that we can see about God’s sovereign will over ours and how that interacts with love.

Most men, if they are honest with themselves, desire to be loved by a woman and to be in a love relationship with one. While we all have various requirements for the “woman of our dreams”, the basic fact is that we desire to be loved by this “perfect person”. The responsibility which weighs upon the shoulders of a man, at least in our western culture, is that he is the one who is supposed to take the initiative in the relationship in every phase from initial pursuit to engagement and marriage. But, how are we to go about this pursuit of relationships and how are we going to get that “perfect woman” to fall in love with us? Every man, again, if they are honest, would say that they desire to be loved freely by this woman. She should fall in love with us without any coercion on our part. How many of us would brag about the fact that we were in a relationship with a girl because we had forced her or convinced her through complex arguments that they should be with us? I think that not many would desire this scenario. Having a woman say, “I love you” when she was forced or convinced to say that would not be very fulfilling or pleasing to us. No, coercion would seem to take something out of the basic essence of love and so we all want to be loved freely. However, there is a third option to this scenario. What if a woman did not love you freely, simply because she arbitrarily chose to and she did not love you because you forced her or convinced her to love you but loved you simply because in light of who you were she could do nothing else. Everything about who you are draws her attraction and when she is allowed to see you for who you are, she is unable to do anything else but love you because of your perceived beauty and perfection. Would this not be the most satisfying scenario for most men? She loves you not because of an arbitrary choice or coercion but simply because you are so amazing that it would be impossible for her not to love you. How incredible!

I think that this illustration from human relationships shows us something which is not often understood in our thinking about God: namely that He draws us to Himself because of His ultimate beauty and perfection and when our souls accurately perceive this, it is impossible for them not to be drawn to God. I have often heard the objection made against Calvinistic Theology that God desires to be loved freely by His creation and so any Sovereign Act of His will in that process would cause the love He receives not to be genuine love. Thus, for God to be truly glorified and loved by His creation, there must be something of our autonomous choice in the matter, otherwise He is not loved and He does not receive true pleasure in being loved. And so, the matter is often bifurcated in this way: either God does all the work of saving in which He takes our wills and “forces” them to choose Himself or we are left to our own choice with God “hoping” that we will choose Him and love Him so that He can be glorified. However, from my perspective, these are both wrong estimations of the issue and both of them are, ultimately, not very glorifying to God. What if God’s irresistible grace worked in another way completely different to anything we have yet examined here. Let me propose this scenario. Our minds are darkened by sin so that they cannot rightly understand or perceive God. They spend all of their energy on the pursuits of the things that their darkened minds think will give them pleasure. What our minds do not accurately perceive is that God, in all of His beauty and perfection, is the source of all the pleasure our souls could ever want. And so God, in His sovereign mercy, lifts the veils off our eyes to behold His glory. When God is then beheld by the soul in all of His glory, the soul is enraptured by this beauty and perfection and is unable to do anything but gladly and with great rejoicing, forsake whatever it had pursued in the past and drink deeply from what it not understands to be its true pleasure. God brings men to themselves and they are brought to love Him not by some arbitrary choice which it makes and not by some dry and impersonal force of God’s will but by the beholding of God in His infinite perfection and beauty. This is what is ultimately most pleasing to God because He is delighted in by His creation because of what He has enabled them to see: namely His beauty.

Irresistible Grace

2007-07-07T23:52:00.000-07:00

Irresistible Grace!

Apprehended by the love of Christ, what shall I do?
To the right or left my heart cannot go,
But only straight on through
To the rapturous delights of Divine Love!

Shall my heart now grumble at its apprehension?
How could that ever be so;
For in that wonderful, Divine Condescension
My Soul apprehends its perfect joy!

“God’s yoke is burdensome” my heart shall never say.
But ever will it praise the One
Who bore the burden that my soul may,
By Grace, see and be satisfied!

Banned Video

2007-04-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

I think everyone should see this video by Mark Driscoll on Church Planting. Because Bill Hybels disapproved of it's not mentioning Women as church planters, it was not distributed to church planters at a conference in Florida. If you want to see what it means to plant churches and be faithful to God... check this out!

Persecution in India

2007-04-04T21:28:00.000-07:00

Many of you know that I had the priviledge of spending six months in India working with a ministry training young men to be pastors and church planters in their rural villages. Since returning home, Katie and I have had the priviledge of supporting one of my students. I received an email today saying that he experienced severe persecution for taking a stand for their faith in the midst of a Hindu Festival. Please pray for them as you read this... I have changed the names to protect them should anyone desire to use this for hindrance of the work of the ministry. Praise God that He has been sufficient for them during this time!

Dear Scott & Katty,

Greetings in the name of
our Risen Saviour!

Thank u for ur mail to A____. u two have
been very much in our prayers. May the Lord help u with ur
study.
S___ & his family went through a difficult time last year in the month of
October. PEOPLE FROM OTHER FAITH came to their village and beat them up
for not co-operating with them during their
festival time. His parents were beaten up. His wife who was in family way was
not speared. Due to the beating she lost her child. But the Lord was with them
and the remaind faithful to Him. Continue to uphold him in your prayers.

With prayer,
T___ da

Meditation on Discipleship from First John

2007-03-19T22:04:00.000-07:00

The way to inspire obedience and devotion is to inspire Love and Awe. This is the way that God deals with His children!

Note: This does not leave out discipline. An absolutely necessary part of love is discpline!

Mars Hill Church

2006-12-27T23:07:00.000-08:00

Anyone looking for good preaching should check this out!

Modern Day Puritans

2006-10-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

In honor of Purgatorio's search for the ultimate modern Puritan, I've compiled a list of those who, in my opinion, most embody the spirit of those great, godly men and women from the past. (Note: by Puritan I do not mean the stuffy, stodgy and legalistic portrait that has been painted of them in contemporary times. I mean to emphasize the great vision of the Glory of God in theology and the Christian life that these people had as they strove to reform the Church in England.)

1. John Piper: Piper has become synonymous for me with the spirit of modern day puritanism. Piper, more than any other contemporary author I have read is passionate about the glory of God and seeing that worked out in the life of the church and individual Christians.

2. Mark Driscoll: Driscoll is a great encouragement to me in that he is extremely theologically driven and yet has a very balanced view of the Christian life. I think that we can expect to see him have a bigger influence on the church in coming years than just about anyone else I that I know of.

3. J.I. Packer: Packer has been seeking for his whole ministry to reform the Anglican church with Reformation doctrine. What can be more Puritan than that? He has combined depth of theological insight with with a concern for how it fleshes itself out in the Christian life.

4. Grant Horner: Horner is professor of English at The Master's College in Santa Clarita, CA. I almost learned more theology from him than I did from my theology classes! Following in the footsteps of John Milton, he effectively teaches discernment in theology and life both in the academy and the church.

5. Scott Hafemann: His book, "The God of Promise and the Life of Faith: Understanding the Heart of the Bible" ought to become a classic of Christian theological/devotional literature. He makes Biblical Theology practical!

6. D.A. Carson: Carson may be the John Owen of our time... enough said!

7. Paul David Tripp: Tripp, along with David Powlision, Ed Welch and Ted Tripp have done much for advancing today's Biblical Counseling movement... which is really the grandson of the Puritan's view of discipleship.

8. Tim Keller: Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian church, Keller is the thinker and theologian for today's missional churches. Just as the puritans were seeking to renew the church and the culture, today's reformed missional church movement is striving to accomplish this in our culture today.

9. Jerry Bridges: Possibly the John Bunyan of today.

10. Graeme Goldsworthy: More than anyone, Goldsworthy has brought the heart piercing benefits of Biblical Theology centered on Christ into the church for the benefits of preachers and congregations everywhere.

If anyone happens to read this and thinks that I've left someone out, please feel free to let me know who you think I should add. God bless!

Random

2006-10-11T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Enlarged Heart

2006-06-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

I have chosen the way of faithfulness; I set your rules before me. I cling to your testimonies, O Lord; let me not be put to shame! I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart!
- Psalm 119:30-32

One of the things that I love so much about the Book of Psalms is how the authors, fully possessed by the Spirit, expressed such a radical and absolute dependence on God for enabling in all sorts of practical areas of life. No less so in these verses, the writer expresses to God his earnest desire to grow and be faithfully obedient and yet recognizes that there is nothing he can do in and of himself to accomplish what he has purposed to do.

These verses appear on the Daleth portion of Psalm 119. Interestingly enough, Hebrew poets seemed to love the acrostic form of poetry. This Psalm is an acrostic using each of the letters of the Hebrew Alphabet. Each separate section functions almost as it's own separate Psalm but the whole is tied together by the author's longing after God through His Word IE: The Law.

Verses 25-29 in Daleth, the Psalmist expresses his absolute need for God to reveal to him and teach him the truth and meaning contained in the written revelation. His goal is seeking to have true understanding of God's Word is not simply the experience of knowing the Word because that would seem to be a rather meaningless and hollow dead end. Rather, He expresses that he desires to know and be taught the Word to the end that He might have life v.25, meditate on the marvelous character and workings of God in history v.27, be strengthened through joy v.28, and that he might reflect the glorious Holiness of God to those around him v.29. The author seems to genuinely perceive that the text of Scripture is the means that God's Spirit uses to grant greater fullness of communion with Himself. The inevitable outworking of this is that the Psalmist would be a man visibly passionate about the Law, the Glory of God and a man whose life radiated God's glory and holiness as expressed in the commandments of the Law.

It is with this knowledge and humble dependence that the Psalmist joyfully and triumphantly proclaims that he has "chosen the way of faithfulness" to God, that he clings to God's testimonies and that he will run (not walk or meander)the way of God's commandments. He resolves that his will be a life not of the dull humdrum of making it through life as comfortably as possible but rather the excitement of pursuing fullness of joy in God through relationship and fellowship with Him!

How is it possible now for the Psalmist to proceed with these bold and God-glorifying statements? It is unimaginable that after expressing such absolute inability in himself to grasp and be grasped by God's Spirit through His Word that he should now go out and expresses so much confidence in Himself to carry out what he has tasted in the Word. No, he tells us that not apart from God enlarging his heart will he be able to live any of the righteousness that he so desires. God must so work in his hard and stone-like heart that his heart is as if totally transformed into a heart that is soft and tender like young flesh. This was begun in nothing other than God's Sovereign act of recreating His whole soul (heart) and continues now as he grows through God's Sovereign grace that is poured out continually by the Holy Spirit.

I confess, along with the Psalmist, that apart from God sovereignly enlarging my heart, moving my will and directing my way, I have no hope of pursuing a life that will bring honor and praise and worship to Him. I don't say this with a mere stoic attitude of flippancy towards whatever happens. I recognize that unless God looks kindly on me and pours out Grace, that I would be left in the mess that I am continually being redeemed from.

The Cobbler

2006-04-22T21:22:00.000-07:00

I wonder what William Carey must have thought as he would sit in his little village in England and work on peoples shoes. Did he feel that such work was trivial to someone who wanted to pursue the ministry? Had he ever struggled with contentment in working such a base profession when what he truly desired to do was preach and proclaim the excellencies of the Gospel? I wonder what the Lord used that time to teach him and the kind of grace that He poured into his life through that time.

History knows William Carey as the father of the modern missions movement. He was a man who was accomplished as a Pastor, Theologian and Linguist. During his lifetime, he founded the first modern church plant, wrote the first treatise on the work of missions, translated the bible into over 100 Indian dialects (most of which are still being used today) and taught Sanskrit at Calcutta University. God has caused the effects of his life to be felt up to our present day and, I'm sure, for many more generations to come! Yet, he was a man who toiled in the profession of a Cobbler for the first part of his life and even during his first years in India. God must have used that time to fuel his passion for ministry and zeal to be freed up to pursue ministry endeavors with all his time.

The story is told that one Sunday, some disgruntled members of his congregation at Lal Bazaar Baptist Chapel hung their sandals in his pulpit before he arrived for the morning worship service. In Indian society, this is one of the worst insults you can direct at someone. Carey, when he climbed into his pulpit to begin the service saw the sandals and tooke them from the pulpit. As he looked at the sandals, he began to tell the congregation how he was only a simple Cobbler who desired to please the Lord with his life and the ministry entrusted to him.

William Carey's Pulpit at Carey Baptist Church in Kolkata

Calvary's Elucidation

2006-03-20T21:49:00.000-08:00

Yet Listen Now,
Oh, listen with the wondering olive trees,
And the white moon that looked between the leaves,
And gentle earth that shuddered as she felt
Great drops of blood. All torturing questions cease
In him who girds his soul to listen there.
There, only there, can we take heart to hope
For all lost lambs---aye, even for ravening wolves.
Oh, there are things done in the world today
Would root up faith, but for Gethsemane.

For Calvary interprets human life:
No path of pain but there we meet our Lord;
And all the strain, the terror and the strife,
Die down like waves before His peaceful word.
And nowhere but beside the awful Cross,
And where the olives grow along the hill,
Can we accept the unexplained, the loss,
The Crushing agony, and hold us still.
And nowhere is that clearer vision given
Which pierces a bewildering providence,
And opens windows upon highest heaven,
But where we see Suffering Omnnipotence.

Amy Carmichael's words are brilliant. There is not a reason in the world that a Christian should continue in faithfulness and pursue fulness of Joy in God except that Christ has, on the Cross, shown us that all our wisdom and attempts to understand are worth nothing compared to the excellencies of His wisdom. We can hope, love and enjoy because of God's Glorious work through Christ!

Just for Kicks :-)

2006-02-23T21:12:00.000-08:00

Why is Hell Just That... Hell?

2006-02-23T20:34:00.000-08:00

How many people really have ever wondered why the place that Christianity has traditionally called Hell is just that... Hell? It's not something that I've ever particularly desired to spend much time thinking in depth upon and I think most people would echo similar sentiments. Hell is something that is not very pleasant to dwell upon and as a result, we don't spend much time focusing on it. However, if we would take a moment to examine why Hell is a place of torment, we might be surprised with what we learn.

I take as my starting point 2 Corinthians 3:18 and 4:6. "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is spirit." "For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Paul makes it explicitly clear that the transformation in the life of a believer comes as a result of SEEING GOD! As we look through scripture this truth is confirmed as we examine the lives of various people who had encounters with God. Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the Apostle Peter and the Apostle John are all examples of this. Their lives were transformed as they gazed upon the beauty and glory of the Lord such that they were drawn to him and transformed. This transformation is ultimately God's work but the means he uses is the delight and satisfaction that come from seeing God as He truly is. Therefore, although much more could be said of this by way of proof, we understand that seeing God truly with spiritual eyes is to delight in him. The very joy of eternal life comes not in living forever without dying but living forever without dying in a state of sheer, ever increasing bliss because of the presence of our Father God!

There will come a day when all men will be resurrected and stand before God in judgment and worship. As Paul tells us in Philippians 2:10-11, all men, not just Christians, will worship God at the last day. I take this to mean that all men, Jew or Gentile, Christian or Non-Christian will come to see the full-glory of God in all its delightful, satisfying radiance. Now, imagine catching a true glimpse of that which you finally realize is the true satisfaction of your soul. For a moment you are able to worship it and bask in its glory and then, you are suddenly whisked away and completely shut out from that which you finally realized is your satisfaction. I think that would be the greatest torment for any human being to endure! The Bible describes Hell as a place of "weeping and gnashing of teeth". What better the cause of this weeping and gnashing of teeth than for a soul to realize that it had done the greatest offence of scoring the Glory of the God of the Universe. It's likely Biblically that this is not the only torment of Hell. It's very possible that there may be literal, physical torment of flames. It's very possible that a soul may be embittered and tormented by it's own darkness as every last shred of Common Grace is removed from it. But I believe that greater than anything else man can come up with, the greatest torment is to be totally shut out from the glory, light and benevolence of God.

The thought of this eternal torment of a human soul is not a very encouraging or delightful subject to spend much time thinking about. However, it does highlight something very precious that we have as believers. The extent of the miseries of a soul suffering for eternity in Hell is the exact opposite of the extent to which we will delight and grow in delight in God for all eternity! While the absence of the glory and presence of God is the greatest torment a human soul can experience the presence of God's glory is the supreme and most sublime delight that we will experience. At the moment, we experience God's glory and presence in a way that can not even come close to the extent we will enjoy God in the New Creation. Praise be to God for this!!

Pervasive Depravity

2006-02-22T21:33:00.000-08:00

Katie and I took our Pastor and his wife (Brian and Chandra Howard) out to dinner tonight. By the way, this is a great thing for people in the church to do, especially if you pastor has kids at home. As we were discussing the counseling ministry that our church is beginning to start up, he made a very interesting statement. He said that the more he talks to and counsels people, the more he truly believes that very few people even in the church have their act together like they would like people around them to believe. It's easy to go through life believing that most people live good lives free from the kinds of gross sins that are looked down upon by the Church and Society in general. However, we know biblically and practically speaking that this certainly isn't the case. The Bible teaches that men are totally depraved and who are we kidding (and harming) but ourselves to let this sin remain hidden. Now, that's not to say that we should go about proclaiming and parading our sin for everyone to see. However the public confession of sin is something that is very healthy in the church. It is a sign that the Spirit has been working through the Scriptures to bring people to conviction. More than that, for true believers, it is a sign that we are truly trusting ourselves to the Grace of God and the transforming power of His Spirit working to reveal His irresistable Glory. As believers, we all struggle to relate to God on the basis of Grace and not on the phantom concept of works righteousness. Trusting in God's grace means that we won't fear the illumination of our sin but rather rejoice that God has already dealt with it on the Cross of Christ and that His Holy Spirit is working to root that sin out from our lives to enable us all the more to enjoy making much of God!

Homiletics and Preaching Part 1

2006-02-04T11:05:00.000-08:00

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
- 1 Corinthians 1:17

As someone who aspires to the preaching ministry, this is a passage which has scared me for a long time! The implication that Paul is stating in this passage is enormous if we would but take a moment to really think about what He is saying. Essentially, it boils down to the fact that if he (or, I assume, any other preacher) preaches the gospel "with words of eloquent wisdom" then the ability of the cross to save is totally removed! So the responsibility of the preacher and the implications for HOW HE PREACHES are absolutely staggering. So then it would befit preachers to understand exactly what Paul means here or else run the risk of totally destroying all that they set out to do in preaching ministry.

This passage is set against the background of the intellectual Greek world. The city of Corinth was very near in proximity to Athens, the historic center of Greek intellectual and artistic culture. Oration or public speaking was one of the common facets of Greek life. One could always hear philosophers debating or giving speeches on a given topic in the market place, the center of Greek life. Many Greek orators were impressive in their ability to use rhetoric to influence an audience towards their perspective. This is something with which the Corinthian church would have been very familiar having spent their entire lives immersed in this culture which practically worshipped this kind of intellectual prowess.

Therefore, as the gospel was entering the Greek culture or any culture for that matter, it would have been very tempting for evangelists and pastors to preach using this very well crafted, rhetorical style of speaking in order to most effectively stir their audiences to action. This is what I believe Paul means when he speaks of "eloquent words of wisdom". So, it is this eloquent, rhetorical preaching which Paul says will "empty the cross of Christ". But how exactly is it that preaching in this way removes the cross' ability to save?

Let me offer two similar but different scenarios. First, a man comes to town preaching the gospel. His style is very polished, his homiletics are impeccable and he does all "the right things" that a preacher should do. He pauses at all the right critical junctures and lilts his voice at all the exclamation points. His preaching stirs many people in the crowd to action to do what he is urging them to do, namely repent. Now, if an observer were looking on to this scene what would he attribute the amazing response to? Well, of course it would have to be attributed to the remarkable rhetorical and homiletical ability of this man. He is his great speaking ability was able to move the crowd to accept and believe the position he was advocating. In our second scenario, a man comes into a town preaching the gospel. His appearance is not the neatest or cleanest and his speech is not very impressive. However, as he preaches the gospel, the audience is rowsed, convicted and many people are converted. In this second scenario, who would get the glory? From a human standpoint, it would be hard to attribute such a remarkable response to the work of this unimpressive person. The only real explanation for this would be to attribute it to the working of God and His Spirit. In this case, he gets the glory!

I believe that this understanding calls for us to radically think through the process of preaching and the homiletics which accompany that act!

Pismo

2006-01-17T22:12:00.000-08:00

Katie and I just returned from an amazing weekend at Pismo Beach with her family! The weather, aside from a little rain, was wonderful and it was great to be back out in the beauty of creation after six months of sitting at a desk :-)

New Years and New Creation

2005-12-30T10:21:00.000-08:00

I have no idea whether or not this is an original idea but I was contemplating today that every New Year is an exercise in failed hope which, for a believer, lifts his eyes towards the hope of new creation. Let me explain.... Every year, there is so much contemplation on the mistakes and hardships of the past year and hopes for ease and prosperity of the new year. A new year is viewed as a new start, a time when you can start fresh and mold your life into the perfection that you dreamed of in the past year and all the years before that. This is why the custom of making resolutions for the new year has become so common in the Western World. However, what every person meets in the new year is nothing but renewed sorrow, pain, loneliness and a continuing sense of sinfulness (whether one realizes this or not). After such high hopes for a bright and comfortable new year, the hopes are dashed as one problem or another creeps up and dashes our hopes against the rocks on the shores of this life.

Amid all the despair and spoiled hopes year after year there is a ray of light that pierces this darkness, a hope that has broken through the cloud and fog of this shadowy place that shows us that there is something better. This long and continuous cycle of old year ending and new year beginning points us towards the final ending and the final beginning. God promises us in passages such as Isaiah 25, 65 and Revelation 21 that this world which we now live in is not permanent nor perfect. In fact, it is so imperfect and it's foundations are so rotted away that it must be recreated if it is to accurately display the beauty of the one who creates it. And so, there will be one final ending when death, pain, sorrow, all the struggles and anguish of this life will be wiped away and we who are chosen by God will step into the new world of infinite beauty, joy and delight in our Sovereign Creator and Redeemer. Finally we will live fully in the light of God's glory and will delight in all around us that perfectly points us toward that which ultimately fills us with delight. Currently, we only conceive of this future dimly but because of God's spirit working from within, we see that this hope and the very first blossoms of this new creation are beginning to shine on us now. Have a wonderful and happy New Year in anticipation of the fulfillment of our New Life in Christ!

6 On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined And he will swallow up on this mountainthe covering that is cast over all peoples,the veil that is spread over all nations.8 He will swallow up death forever;and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces,and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,for the Lord has spoken.9 It will be said on that day,ÂBehold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.This is the Lord; we have waited for him;let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.Â10 For the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain,and Moab shall be trampled down in his place,as straw is trampled down in a dunghill. [1]11 And he will spread out his hands in the midst of itas a swimmer spreads his hands out to swim,but the Lord will lay low his pompous pride together with the skill [2] of his hands.12 And the high fortifications of his walls he will bring down,lay low, and cast to the ground, to the dust.

-Isaiah 25:6-12

2005-04-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

When faced with the grandeur of God, how is it possible for me not to fall on my face in worship? In a photo such as this, I am reminded that the earth, though contaminated by sin, still bears witness to the glory of God. Every moment I walk out of my door is a moment of worship not because all of creation is to be worshipped but because God causes His goodness and glory to scream at me through His creation. The world around me is meant to cause me to enjoy God all the more.

2005-04-07T12:57:00.000-07:00

This photo represents the central purpose of our lives here on earth! The center of God's purpose and therefore our lives also is the spread of His fame throughout the universe so that He might be marveled at and enjoyed!