Monthly Archives: July 2012

Paul’s Use of Logic

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“It is perfectly logical and reasonable to examine a position, or the progression of a position, and work out its implications. Paul himself does this to the Corinthians.

Evidently swayed by Greek philosophy, some puddingheads in Corinth denied the doctrine of bodily resurrection. Paul was appalled, and with inexorable logic worked out the implications of this view. Notice his progression, “If you are saying A, then B naturally follows, as well as C, and D, and….”

12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then [A] not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then [B] our preaching is in vain and [C] your faith is in vain. 15 [D] We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, [E] not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, [F] your faith is futile and [G] you are still in your sins. 18 Then [H] those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, [I] we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:12-19)

Paul works out easily nine implications of this fundamental error, all designed to show where it necessarily leads. Perhaps the errorists would have cried, ‘Paul, that’s a straw man! We’re not saying any of that!’ To this, the apostle might have replied, ‘Not yet. But this is where your premises necessarily lead.'”

– Dan Phillips

How to write a Country song

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Andy Gullahorn explains how easy it is to write a country song. He then sings “Workin’ Man.” Enjoy!

So… after all that, here’s the song “They danced alone.” Written as a joke, it is actually a very moving story set to music. See if this does not play with your heart strings.

Expanding our Vocabulary

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Its all too easy to be lazy with our choice of words. This tendency leads to vagueness, and can be downright boring. Instead, lets stretch ourselves to illustrate, elucidate and illuminate our world by expanding our vocabulary in communication.

Having said that, I can’t quite decide if this video is “good” for the important point it makes, or “bad” because it takes almost five minutes to say it, when one or two minutes would have more than sufficed.

What’s the Difference Between the Decretive and the Preceptive Wills of God?

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“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” – Deut 29:29

In this excerpt from his teaching series, “Foundations,” Dr. R.C. Sproul distinguishes between the decretive and the preceptive wills of God.

Transcript
The secret things of the LORD our God belong to Him. That refers to what we call the hidden will of God. Now usually when we’re speaking of the hidden will of God we have in our mind the decretive will of God. And when people say to me, “What is the will of God for my life?” I say, remember that the Bible uses the word “will of God” in several different ways. The first way in which we talk about the will of God is what we call the decretive will; and the decretive will of God is that will of God by which God sovereignly brings to pass whatsoever He wills. Sometimes it’s called the absolute will of God; sometimes it’s simply called the sovereign will of God; sometimes it’s called in theology the efficacious will of God. But normally, we talk about the decretive will of God. That is, when God decrees sovereignly that something should come to pass, it must needs come to pass.

The Bible frequently speaks about the determinate counsel of God. Where, when God has decreed from all eternity that Christ should die on the cross in Jerusalem at a particular time in history, it must needs come to pass. It comes to pass through the determinate counsel or will of God. That’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about the decretive will of God. That will that God brings to pass by the sheer power of His sovereignties. It’s irresistible, it has to happen. When God calls the world into existence, it comes into existence. It cannot not begin, the lights cannot not come on when He says, “Let there be light.” That’s the decretive will of God.

Now, we also talk about the preceptive will of God. And we understand that the decretive will of God cannot be resisted. The preceptive will of God not only can be resisted by us, but is resisted all the time. The preceptive will of God is a reference to God’s law; to His commandments. This is the will of God that you not have any other God’s before Him. Now when people call me and they say, “How can I know the will of God for my life?” I want to say to them, what will are you talking about? Are you talking about the decretive will of God? Are you talking about the hidden will of God? If you’re talking about the hidden will of God, the first thing you have to understand about the hidden will of God is that it’s hidden.

And when people say to me, “What does God want me to do in this sort of case?” I say, how do I know? I study theology, but I can’t read God’s mind. All I can do is read God’s Word. And what God’s Word does for me is give me His revealed will. And that’s enough of a task to last me my lifetime trying to sort out everything that is in this book that God has revealed. And if you’re asking me about that I can help you with it; but if you’re asking me about His hidden will, you’re asking the wrong person, because I have no earthly idea what is in God’s mind where He has not revealed Himself.

Now Calvin made his comment at this point, he says, “Where God closes His holy mouth, I will desist from inquiry.” I’ll say that again, “Where God closes His holy mouth, I will desist from inquiry.” Now to translate that into modern nomenclature, we would say something like this, “The hidden will of God is none of your business, that’s why it’s hidden.”

Intimate Details Kept Intimate

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Here’s a short and in this case, followed by my response.

In a recent book review you said that it’s not wise for a husband and wife to tell anyone else how often they have sex together. Can you explain this a bit more and maybe explain how a husband and wife can figure out how often they should have sex?

I believe it is generally unwise and unhelpful for a husband and wife to share details of their sexual intimacy or to read the details of another couple’s sexual intimacy. Of course there may be times and contexts in which a certain level of detail is genuinely helpful, such as when an older couple provides counsel to a younger couple who is struggling in an area. But to share details publicly and to share very intimate details, is usually unwise and unhelpful. I am not saying that it is necessarily sinful, just that there is a better way to achieve the end result.

One of the details that is best kept between a husband and wife is the frequency with which they have sex. There are many places you can go to find statistics on this, and there are even many Christian authors who include such numbers in their books about sexuality. I have several concerns with the appeal to statistics.

In the first place, statistics necessarily provoke comparison. In this case, comparison may well generate either pride or discontentment, either a sense of superiority that you and your spouse have sex more often than the average couple, or discontentment that everyone else is enjoying sex more often than you.

Second, statistics of this kind do very little to take into account context and life stage and even the natural variances in desire between individuals and couples. What is clear about the sexual relationship is that it is always in flux, it is always changing, and every couple needs to give it regular attention if it is to keep from slipping into dysfunction or disregard.

Third, and most significantly, appealing to statistics short circuits the difficult but important process through which a couple can work out just the right frequency in their own relationship. An appeal to statistics may allow a couple to bypass the important matters of heart and character.

With that being said, let me share my thinking on one way a couple may go about finding the frequency that is best for them.
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Distinguishing Between Moral and Natural Inability

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In seeking to explain the difference between moral and natural ability (a concept taught by Jonathan Edwards), taking something we can understand in the physical realm (the realm observable to our senses) and applying the principle to something we cannot see – the hidden desires of the heart. In commenting on Jesus’ words in John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless that Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day” he writes:

“… Edwards distinguished between moral and natural inability. Because man’s inability is moral and not natural, according to Edwards, the individual is responsible for the choices he or she makes. Here is a simple illustration: in the natural world there are animals that eat nothing but meat. They are called carnivores, from caro, carnis, which means “meat.” There are other animals that eat nothing but grass or plants. They are called herbivores, from herba, which means vegetation. Imagine taking a lion, who is a carnivore, and placing a bundle of hay or a trough of oats before him. He will not eat the hay or oats. Why not? It is not because he is physically or naturally unable to eat them. Physically, he could munch on the oats and swallow them. But he does not and will not, because it is not in his nature to eat this kind of food. Moreover, if we were to ask why he will not eat the herbivore’s meal, and if the lion could answer, he would say, “I can’t eat this food, because I hate it. I will only eat meat.”

Now think of the verse that says, “Taste and see that the LORD is good” (Ps. 34:8), or of Jesus saying, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eat of this bread, he will live forever” (John 6:51). Why won’t a sinful person “taste and see that the Lord is good” or feed upon Jesus as “the living bread”? To use the lion’s words, it is because he “hates” such food. The sinner will not come to Christ because he does not want to. Deep in his heart he hates Christ and what he stands for. It is not because he cannot come naturally or physically.

Someone opposed to this teaching might say, “But surely the Bible says that anyone who will come to Christ may come to him. Didn’t Jesus invite us to come? Didn’t he say, ‘Whoever comes to me I will never drive away’ (John 6:37)? The answer is, “Yes, that is exactly what Jesus said, but it is beside the point.” Certainly, anyone who wants to come to Christ may come to him. That is why Jonathan Edwards insisted that the will is not bound. However, this liberty is what makes our refusal to seek God so unreasonable and increases our guilt. Who is it who wills to come? The answer is, No one, except those in whom the Holy Spirit has already performed the entirely irresistible work of the new birth, so that, as a result of this miracle, the spiritually blind eyes of the natural man are opened to see God’s truth, and the depraved mind of the sinner, which in itself has no spiritual understanding, is renewed to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior.”

– James Montgomery Boice, Philip Graham Ryken, The Doctrines of Grace, p. 85, 86

Where did you learn to preach?

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None should approach the sacred desk who have not been personally called to do so, by the Master.

As I watched the short video below, everything in me resonated with what was being said. My heart cried “YES!” Like Dr. Piper, I also was a young boy who could not speak before people. I understand that he also had a severe acne problem just as I did. I was a hospital case for many years. God’s dealings with the heart and mind of a preacher certainly varies case to case, but unless a man is passionately thrilled by what he finds in the text of Scripture, he should do both God and the people he serves a favor and stay well away from the pulpit. It is a high and holy calling to be a herald of the King. Woe to any of us if we are given the most awesome, spectacular and exciting message imaginable, the very Gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and bore people with it. I have seen many people who do so, and it sends a shudder through my soul. Dear God, let not that be true of me! May my love for the Savior and the glories of His word always be both genuine and contagious.

John Piper: “I think the way I became a preacher was by being passionately thrilled by what I was seeing in the Bible in seminary. Passionately thrilled! When Philippians began to open to me, Galatians opened to me, Romans opened to me, the Sermon on the Mount opened to me in classes on exegesis—not homiletics but exegesis—everything in me was feeling, ‘I want to say this to somebody! I want to find a way to say this! Because this is awesome! This is incredible!’

“So preachers today that go everywhere but the Bible to find something interesting or something scintillating and passionate—I don’t get it! I don’t get that at all! Because I have to work hard to leave the Bible and go somewhere to find an illustration because everything here is just blowing me away. And it’s that sense of being blown away by what’s here—by the God that’s here and the Christ that’s here and the Gospel that’s here and the Spirit that’s here and the life that’s here—being blown away by this, you just kinda say, ‘That’s gotta get out. That’s gotta get out.’ …

“I don’t think there’s much you can do to become a preacher except: (1) know your Bible and (2) be unbelievably excited about what’s there, and (3) love people a lot.”

Christ Forsaken

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by ay, d’ye know what it was—dying on the cross,
forsaken by His Father — d’ye know what it was?…
It was damnation — and damnation taken lovingly.”
— John “Rabbi” Duncan (1796–1870)

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46, KJV).

It is noon, and Jesus has been on the cross for three pain-filled hours. Suddenly, darkness falls on Calvary and “over all the land” (v. 45). By a miraculous act of Almighty God, midday becomes midnight.

This supernatural darkness is a symbol of God’s judgment on sin. The physical darkness signals a deeper and more fearsome darkness.

The great High Priest enters Golgotha’s Holy of Holies without friends or enemies. The Son of God is alone on the cross for three final hours, enduring what defies our imagination. Experiencing the full brunt of His Father’s wrath, Jesus cannot stay silent. He cries out: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

This phrase represents the nadir, the lowest point, of Jesus’ sufferings. Here Jesus descends into the essence of hell, the most extreme suffering ever experienced. It is a time so compacted, so infinite, so horrendous as to be incomprehensible and, seemingly, unsustainable.

Jesus’ cry does not in any way diminish His deity. Jesus does not cease being God before, during, or after this. Jesus’ cry does not divide His human nature from His divine person or destroy the Trinity. Nor does it detach Him from the Holy Spirit. The Son lacks the comforts of the Spirit, but He does not lose the holiness of the Spirit. And finally, it does not cause Him to disavow His mission. Both the Father and Son knew from all eternity that Jesus would become the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (Acts 15:18). It is unthinkable that the Son of God might question what is happening or be perplexed when His Father’s loving presence departs.

Jesus is expressing the agony of unanswered supplication (Ps. 22:1–2). Unanswered, Jesus feels forgotten of God. He is also expressing the agony of unbearable stress. It is the kind of “roaring” mentioned in Psalm 22: the roar of desperate agony without rebellion. It is the hellish cry uttered when the undiluted wrath of God overwhelms the soul. It is heart-piercing, heaven-piercing, and hell-piercing. Further, Jesus is expressing the agony of unmitigated sin. All the sins of the elect, and the hell that they deserve for eternity, are laid upon Him. And Jesus is expressing the agony of unassisted solitariness. In His hour of greatest need comes a pain unlike anything the Son has ever experienced: His Father’s abandonment. When Jesus most needs encouragement, no voice cries from heaven, “This is my beloved Son.” No angel is sent to strengthen Him; no “well done, thou good and faithful servant” resounds in His ears. The women who supported Him are silent. The disciples, cowardly and terrified, have fled. Feeling disowned by all, Jesus endures the way of suffering alone, deserted, and forsaken in utter darkness. Every detail of this horrific abandonment declares the heinous character of our sins!

But why would God bruise His own Son (Isa. 53:10)? The Father is not capricious, malicious, or being merely didactic. The real purpose is penal; it is the just punishment for the sin of Christ’s people. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21).

Christ was made sin for us, dear believers. Among all the mysteries of salvation, this little word “for” exceeds all. This small word illuminates our darkness and unites Jesus Christ with sinners. Christ was acting on behalf of His people as their representative and for their benefit.

With Jesus as our substitute, God’s wrath is satisfied and God can justify those who believe in Jesus (Rom. 3:26). Christ’s penal suffering, therefore, is vicarious — He suffered on our behalf. He did not simply share our forsakenness, but He saved us from it. He endured it for us, not with us. You are immune to condemnation (Rom. 8:1) and to God’s anathema (Gal. 3:13) because Christ bore it for you in that outer darkness. Golgotha secured our immunity, not mere sympathy.

This explains the hours of darkness and the roar of dereliction. God’s people experience just a taste of this when they are brought by the Holy Spirit before the Judge of heaven and earth, only to experience that they are not consumed for Christ’s sake. They come out of darkness, confessing, “Because Immanuel has descended into the lowest hell for us, God is with us in the darkness, under the darkness, through the darkness — and we are not consumed!”

How stupendous is the love of God! Indeed, our hearts so overflow with love that we respond, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).