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Monthly Archives: June 2012
A Borrowed Crown
Things Which Ought to Be Better Known about the Resurrection of Jesus
The Editing of God
Many people want a God they can feel entirely comfortable and cosy with and have a great measure of distaste for the God of the Bible. Sadly, this is true for many professing Christians. They have a particular aversion to the freedom of a Sovereign God to do what He wishes in the realm of space and time, and therefore “edit God” until He becomes a much more manageable deity in their thinking. Of course, in reality, no such made up God exists, except in their imaginations.
Dr. James White outlines this issue in a video posted in 2009 entitled “God’s Decree and Sovereignty” where he walks us through Isaiah Chapter 10:
Ten Tips for Evangelism
Martin Salter is assistant pastor at Grace Community Church, unforced way)
2. Ask friends about their faith – and just listen!
3. Listen to your friends problems – maybe offer to pray for them
4. Share your problems with others – testify to how your faith helps you
5. Give them a book to read
6. Share your story
7. Answer objections and questions
8. Invite them to a church event
9. Offer to read the Bible with them
10. Take them to a Christianity explored course
What Keller also advises is that we (generally) start with 1-4. If people are interested and want to talk more you can move them to stages 5-7. If they’re still interested go on to stages 8-10. Sometimes people will want to go straight to 10, but often people start from way back and need some time to think and discuss things in a non-pressured way. We often think that only stages 8-10 count and invest all our energy there. TK suggests that to get people at stages 8,9,10 you have to put the work in at 1-4. Sometimes you’ll have to keep going round the loop multiple times.
TK suggests to leaders that we should aim to get 20% of our folk doing this (of course it should be 100% but let’s be realistic). If we do, we’ll see a steady stream of conversions over the long term, and sustainable church growth.
A man of two questions
“Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” – 2 Tim 2:7
MESSAGE TO SELF:
You may be armed with an inspiring quote, found a good phrase you might use as a punch line, you might have heard a great story that is sure to “wow” the people, you might have up to date facts and figures at your disposal that might possibly be shocking or even frightening, but certainly, enlightening; you might have a file of pithy quotes showing how the great thinkers of the church have seen the issue; yes, you may have all of this and a whole lot more, but remember this, when you step into your office to study the word of God, you enter what for you is sacred space.
Of course, it may not be seen that way to others, but it has to be this way for you. There should be no discussion or debate on this. This is the time when you pour out your heart to God, pleading with Him to open up the text of the Bible to you. This is where you declare your total dependence on the Holy Spirit, even though He might use your study habits as a means to opening up your understanding. This is the place where the man becomes the man of God. Alone with God, your gaze is heavenward in heart, while your eyes peer downward at the text of the Bible in front of you.
Remember too that all of hell trembles as you enter this place. Hell fears the proclamation of the word of God as no other thing in this world. You wrestle not with flesh and blood but against hostile unseen forces seeking to distract you from your calling. Hell has no fear of a joke; of a punch line; or an insightful quote, but hell trembles when a man of God proclaims the word of God. If the devil cannot stop you in public, he will seek to win the war in private, distracting you with a million other things and a million other affections.
So knowing that there is both heavenly and hellish interest in what you do in your study, settle it forever. This is a sacred place to you. Its a place where you are unreachable (and those close to you know it) unless there is an emergency. Your phone is off. There are no earthly distractions. Outside the study, you have all the time in the world for people, your family especially; but inside, you have entered, what is for you, the very holy of holies.
Your task is not complicated but amazingly simple – to please the audience of One.
How exactly do you do that?
You know the answer, but let me remind you once again. Your task is not first to think of how to communicate truth; how to say it with passion, how to communicate in such a way that people can identify with it.. no, no, no, a thousand times, no. That is important. God offers no rewards for the boring preacher. Yet communication is a secondary matter. That comes later.
Your first priority is to ask (and then answer) two simple questions:
(1) What does the Bible say?
(2) What does it mean by what it says?
Blessed are your eyes because they see
Does it help a blind man if we light his room with a bulb ten times more powerful than the one he is used to? Silly question, right? We all know that the problem is not the amount of light available to the man. The problem is that a blind man cannot see.
Obvious though it is to say so, a blind man needs sight BEFORE he can see. Of course, he must have light to see, but a blind person needs A WHOLE LOT MORE than light. He needs new eyes. He needs a miracle. He needs the gift of sight.
Jesus said, “Unless a man is born again he CANNOT SEE the kingdom of God.” – John 3.
Spiritually speaking, man is not near sighted. He is blind. His problem cannot be corrected by an act of human will. He needs the miracle of sight. Jesus said that unless he is born again (born from above) it is impossible for him to see the kingdom of God. Man desperately needs the light of the gospel yet, spiritually speaking, he is totally blind to it until God enables him to “see.”
2 Corinthians 4:3-6 confirms this as the Apostle Paul states, “3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 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.”
Paul likens the giving of spiritual sight to the miracle of creation itself. There is nothing more powerful than that. Just as God said “Let there be light” and light came into being, God has said, “Let there be light” in the heart of every true child of God. That is why, “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come.”
As much as we enjoy hearing the testimonies of God’s healing power, the child of God has experienced a miracle far more powerful and far more meaningful than anything on a merely physical plane. God has taken out a heart of stone with its total inability to “see” and in its place, put in a heart of flesh, which, having now seen the immensity of His worth, adores Christ and is enraptured with His gospel of grace. Do you see just how precious this is?
In humble gratitude for the mercy of God, the born again man can only say “amen” to these words of Jesus: “BUT BLESSED ARE YOUR EYES BECAUSE THEY SEE…” (Matt 13:16).
Amazing Grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now am found
Was blind but now I see
As the Gospel goes forth today, may God open up the eyes of the blind.
Eternal Security
I don’t really like the phrase “eternal security” or its popular counterpart “once saved always saved” because both tend to come with a huge amount of unscriptural theological baggage. For many people, “eternal security” means that if a person makes some sort of profession of faith and then lives a lifestyle totally at odds with that profession, even renouncing Christianity altogether, they are still “saved” because “once saved, always saved.” I don’t believe that to be a Scriptural concept in any way at all.
While it is true that a genuinely regenerated Christian can be secure in their salvation for all eternity, this is not because of a one time profession of faith so much as the possession of faith. All those who possess true faith will of course profess it, but a mere claim to faith is not enough. As James chapter 2 makes clear, faith without works is dead and a dead faith never saves anyone.
The Bible makes it clear that there is a false faith that is in no way the genuine article. Faith of the real kind will produce fruit – evidence of the Holy Spirit’s abiding presence in the person’s life. That is why we are told to examine ourselves to see whether we are in the faith (2 Cor 13:5). Rather than simply being told to recall a time in our past when we made a profession we are exhorted instead to examine ourselves to see if there is present day evidence that we are truly His. As J. C. Ryle once remarked, “A tree will always be known by its fruit, and a true Christian will always be discovered by their habits, tastes and affections.”
While I certainly do believe in the eternal security of the believer, I tend to avoid the two phrases mentioned above, preferring the theological term “perseverance of the saints” or even better “the preservation of the saints.” Those who are justified will be glorified (Romans 8:30). True believers will continue in the faith because their faith is a supernatural gift from God and by its very nature, is something that endures. The Apostle John recognized this when he wrote: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” (1 John 2:19). The true saint perseveres because God preserves him! The One who started the work will bring it to completion until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:6).
Yet there is a big picture concept that we need to see involving the work of the Trinity in salvation. From the archives at www.aomin.org, in an article entitled “Eternal Security: Based on the Tri-Unity of God” Dr. James White writes:
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Spoken 110 years ago…
Geerhardus Vos, in a 1902 address to Princeton Seminary as the school kicked off its 90th year, with words still relevant today:
No one will deny that in the Scriptural disclosure of truth the divine love is set forth as a most fundamental principle, nor that the embodiment of this principle in our human will and action forms a prime ingredient of that subjective religion which the Word of God requires of us.
But it is quite possible to overemphasize this one side of truth and duty as to bring into neglect other exceedingly important principles and demands of Christianity. The result will be that, while no positive error is taught, yet the equilibrium both in consciousness and life is disturbed and a condition created in which the power of resistance to the inroads of spiritual disease is greatly reduced. There can be little doubt that in this manner the one-sidedness and exclusiveness with which the love of God has been preached to the present generation is largely responsible for that universal weakening of the sense of sin, and the consequent decline of interest in the doctrines of atonement and justification, which even in orthodox and evangelical circles we all see and deplore. – Geerhardus Vos, “The Scriptural Doctrine of the Love of God,” in Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos (ed. Richard Gaffin; P&R, 1980), 426
Takeaway: To seek to exalt God’s love without placing it against the full range of who God is and must be nets out as a diminishing, not exaltation, of that love.
HT: Dane Ortlund
Two marriage myths, busted
Dan Phillips debunks a couple of myths, believed by many people today:
As I continue in my announced intent to share a few bits of Biblical wisdom on marriage, it seems good to start by dispelling a couple of myths. Call me a Biblical “mythbuster.”
First: it takes two to create marital problems. No, it doesn’t. It only takes one.
It feels embarrassing even to have to say that, it’s such a Biblically obvious point — but the notion of necessarily democratically-shared liability is so widespread that some air-clearing is necessary.
I think I’ll call this the Democratic Causality Myth. How do I know it’s a myth? The same way I know anything really important: the Bible. Didn’t you read 1 Peter 2:19-20?
For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.
There you go: it is possible to suffer, not only in spite of doing good, but precisely for doing good. Peter expressly envisions a relationship where Party A causes suffering to Party B, and the latter not only did not “have it coming to him,” but was specifically doing what he ought to be doing.
Peter’s not done with that theme. Note that he says in 3:14a, “even if you should suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed.” There it is again: suffering precisely because one had done what was right.
Of course, we could add a heap of Scriptures, and they’d take us back to our Lord Himself, amid the Beatitudes: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10).
The assumption that all suffering must be immediately traceable to some specifically causative wrongdoing is simply not Biblical. It is to join hands and nod along with Job’s divinely-discredited friends, as they doggedly pursue the etiology of Job’s suffering, sure that he’d brought it on himself somehow.
So if we grant this for all of life, is there some force-field that un-trues the truth when it comes to marriage? Is it only in marriage that we must always split blame for suffering 50-50? I’d like to see that logic diagrammed.
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