For I am nothing without God
Everything that I am is by Grace alone. The longer I live and the more I see, the more obvious this fact becomes. There have been many times in the past (and, no doubt, there will be more occasions in the future) where I have looked upon “my” accomplishments with pride, thinking that “I” have done well. Such thinking is utter foolishness. I would be less than nothing but for the unmerited favour of God.
Dr. Richard Hipp, creator of SQL
Correlating Godliness to Correct Truth
John Piper on the spectrum of knowing correct truth:
God’s revealed will is that we grow in the knowledge of Christ (2 Peter 3:18), because in that way the Spirit can make our holiness the manifest fruit of what we know of Christ, so that Christ is more clearly honored (John 16:14). But the Spirit is free to make little knowledge produce much holiness, lest those with much knowledge be proud.
…
Therefore, let us humble ourselves. There are views so obscured by error that the God on the other side of the glass is not the true God. So the measure of truth in our views matters infinitely. But also, there is no guarantee that right thinking will produce right living. There is more to godliness than having clear views of God. Trusting him and loving him through those views matters infinitely.
Read the full article here.
God’s adoption is greater
A Quote from J.I. Packer:
“That justification – by which we mean God’s forgiveness of the past, together with his acceptance for the future – is the primary and fundamental blessing of the gospel is not in question. Justification is the primary blessing, because it meets our primary spiritual need. We all stand by nature under God’s judgment; his law condemns us; guilt gnaws at us, making us restless, miserable, and in our lucid moments afraid; we have no peace in ourselves because we have no peace with our Maker. So we need the forgiveness of our sins, and assurance of a restored relationship with God, more than we need anything else in the world; and this the gospel offers us before it offers us anything else. … But contrast this, now, with adoption. Adoption is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, and viewing God as father. In adoption, God takes us into his family and fellowship – he establishes us as his children and heirs. Closeness, affection and generosity are at the heart of the relationship. To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is a greater” [Knowing God, pp. 206, 207]
9 Reasons I Started Reading Books
1. To improve my vocabulary
2. To increase in my discipline to finish something to the end
3. To see different points of view
4. To understand how God is working in other people’s lives
5. To keep myself from other sinful activities
6. To increase my arsenal of examples when writing or speaking
7. To better my theology from those who know a whole lot more than me
8. To humble myself in knowing I have no knowledge to boast upon.
9. To be more satisfied in God by hearing his word through others.
An excerpt from God is the Gospel
Woe to us if we speak of our existence, or our being, for its own sake. God has given us existence. It is a great wonder, full of trembling and awe. We exist by him, through him, and for him (Rom. 11:36). The ultimate and greatest good of the gospel is not self-admiration or self-exaltation, but being able to see the glory of God without disintegrating, and being able to delight in the glory of Christ with the very delight of God the Father for his own Son, and being able to do visible Christ-exalting deeds that flow from this delight. So being like God is the ground of seeing God for who he is, and this seeing is the ground of savoring and delighting in the glory of God with the very delight of God, which then overflows with visible displays of God’s glory.
John Piper in “God is the Gospel” pg. 162
Pray for your future wife
The council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has recently done an interview Andrew Case about his new book “Water of the Word”. It encourages men to pray for their future wife:
Perseverance on the narrow road is a miracle of grace. I don’t want “the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things” to enter in and choke the Word in my wife before or after I meet her (Mark 4:19). God must keep her in the love of Christ (Jude 1:1), and I am confident that He uses prayer as a means to that end. I am keenly aware of the propensity within my own heart that Robert Robinson described in song: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it-prone to leave the God I love.” Why not pray for her, as I pray for myself, that He would bind her wandering heart to Himself?
I want to read this book :). It is a great reminder to have prayer in my life and not just prayers for myself, but also for my future wife.
Lingering in Sin
Today I when I woke up, I lingered. I stared at the ceiling pondering how tired I was and how I could use another hour of sleep. I lingered. I instantly put on hold my daily morning duties of meeting God and doing my devotions. I lingered in my sin.
The previous morning I had read about Lot and his lingering to God’s urgent commands:
As morning dawned, the angels urged Lot, saying, “Up! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city.” But he lingered. So the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by the hand, the LORD being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city.
Genesis 19:15,16
God is telling Lot to hurry or be dead. To wake up and run or be swept away by the wrath that God was going to unleash on the sinful city. But what did Lot do? He lingered. This is much how we linger in our sins. We linger around in things that distract us from God.
How did God respond? He rescued Lot from his lingering. The LORD had mercy on him. In the same way, the LORD has mercy on us, who are believers. He rescues us from our sin. He rescues us through his son Jesus Christ who is propitiation for our sins.
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Colossians 1:13,14
Let us thank God for His everlasting mercy and praise HIm for rescuing us from the wrath we deserve.
A Tale of Two Sons by John MacArthur
In “A Tale of Two Sons: The Inside Story of a Father, His Sons, and Shocking Murder”, John MacArthur takes us on an in-depth journey through the most well-known parable “The Prodigal Son”. He talks about how offensive and sinful the younger son was in his prodigal living. He talks about the father’s shocking actions in offering undeserving grace at no cost to the prodigal son. And, not at all the least important, he explores the stubbornness and the prideful attitude of the elder son.
What I enjoy most about “A Tale of Two Sons” is how well MacArthur ties in cultural context and his ability to place the reader in that time; as if Jesus were telling it to us at that very moment. He expresses the shock and awe his listeners would have experienced. For example, he talks about the implications of the Father running to welcome back a wayward and disobedient son:
And make no mistake: in the context of that culture, the father’s action of running to the boy and embracing him before he even came all the way home was seen as a shameful breech of decorum. In the jaded perspective of the scribes and Pharisees, this was just one more thing that added to the father’s shame. For one thing, noblemen in that culture did not run. Running was for little boys and servants. Grown men did not run–especially men of dignity and importance.
A huge theme of the book is how much grace the father extends to the prodigal son. The first half of the book explains how offensive and sinful the actions of the prodigal son was. In fact the name “prodigal” explains a huge part of what that living was like:
The word is used in Luke 15:13 in the New King James Version, where we are told his younger brother “wasted his possessions with prodigal living.” The Greek term there is asotos, meaning wastefulness–but don’t get the notion that the Prodigal’s dominant character flaw was merely that he was a spendthrift. As we’ll soon see, the Greek expression is much stronger than that, conveying strong overtones of licentiousness, promiscuity, and moral debauchery.
The young man is a classic illustration of an undisciplined young person who wastes the best part of his life through extravagant self-indulgence and becomes a slave to his own lust and sin. He is a living picture of the course of sin and how it inevitably debases the sinner.
MacArthur takes us phrase by phrase through the parable and how the younger son degrades both his and his father’s honor with each action he takes. It degrades all the way to the point in which the son desires to eat the garbage the pigs are eating. And it is truely shocking the context that MacArthur ties here:
They start by collecting massive amounts of garbage from the Las Vegas strip, where several tons of spoiled or leftover food are thrown away daily from the casinos’ extravagant buffets. Those leftovers are systematically gathered and hauled to the pig farm in enormous slop trucks.
In the desert heat, by the time the garbage arrives at the farm, it has already blended into a tank of nauseating semiliquid stew. The stench from so much decomposing food must likewise be virtually unbearable. The slop is poured onto a kind of flumelike conveyor system where workers take out as many pieces as possible of various plastic food containers and other nonbiodegradables. The steam of spoiled food is channeled into a two-story-tall kettle, where the whole mess is cooked in order to eliminate the worst bacteria. The resulting goulash is then allowed to cool. By then it’s a nondescript, chunky, globby, bile-colored goo.
Knowing this context of how pig food is made, it gives a whole world of meaning to the fact the prodigal son wished to eat the slop of the pigs. You can see the desperation he has and the hunger he had for something to satisfy him; even if it was temporary.
The story then flips to the father and his abounding grace to the repentant prodigal son. He runs us through how crazy it was for the father to instantly welcome his disobedient and sinful son. He tells of his fathers unending lovingkindness in instantly restoring the son into the family. And he explains us the implications of the father providing sandals, a ring, and the choice robe.
The ultimate purpose is not to talk about the father’s redeeming grace and the joy the prodigal son has in receiving that grace. (Though it is a wonderful truth spoken) The real aim MacArthur is going for is the warnings shown by the elder son; how the father extends the same sufficient grace to him. The difference here is that the elder son rejects this grace and is oblivious due to his self-righteous pride. His response to the father shows how much disdain he has:
The elder son’s self-assessment is one of the most telling aspects of his whole rant. Listen as he expresses the typical hyperinflated self-image of a religious hypocrite: “I never transgressed your commandment at any time” (v. 29). He sounds like the rich young ruler who listened to Jesus’ summary of the Ten Commandments and then blithely replied, “All these things I have kept from my youth. What do I still lack?” (Matthew 19:20)
Where does this disdain and distrust lead? How does the story end when the pride of the elder son is examined by the father? This parable simply has no ending. MacArthur points out who he is telling the story to, which is the self-righteous Pharisees. These are the people he meant to offend continuously with the details in the parable. The abrupt ending was to force the pharisees to realize that this parable was for them. They needed to examine themselves and see what Jesus was telling them. So how did they really respond?
They simply responded how God intended them to respond to make complete the gospel at the cross. The elder son beats the father to death. This is a sobering thought, at least for me. This book has forced me to examine myself and my pride. Do I examine my sinful ways only to come to the father like the prodigal or do I stay in my pride and reject the offer of grace from the Father? Thank God for grace and his sufficient lovingkindness and faithfulness.
This is a great book and a recommended read to give yourself more of an arsenal in thinking about the parable of the Prodigal son.
Around the Horn, April 29th, 2008
How will you use your economic stimulus money?
Clue: Nobody in the world will see you spend your money on yourself and conclude that Christ is your treasure. They will assume you are just like them, no matter how loudly you thank God for this boon. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t spend it on yourself (the way we do with most of what we earn). Not everything we do can look different from the world—eat, pay utilities, fill up the car, wear clothes (even thrift-store clothes). And yes, we hope (somehow) that spending on ourselves in some way contributes to our being more Christ-exalting people.
I think this principle applies not only to our economic stimulus, but our standard paychecks. Do we simply fall into the mold of the “world”? Or do we have hearts that yearn for the glory of God?
No theological tradition has cornered the market on arrogance. I have been accused of it (sometimes, I fear, with very good reason). Yet there seems to be – though I’m sure that what I say here is highly fallible – an amazing quantity of it among the New Calvinists. I’ve been told that my resistance to “the doctrines of grace” (no hubris in that label?) is a sign of my probable reprobation. I’ve had the senior pastor of a fine evangelical church tell me that although we were welcome to attend, I could not expect to be involved in any way because I was not “Reformed” – even though this particular church was not confessionally Reformed at all (their official statement of faith was generically evangelical).
It’s such a shame when our gospel becomes calvinism or armenianism, losing the actual sight of the gospel that Jesus proclaimed and carried out. Yes, these views affect, in very important ways, our view of God and our view of the gospel. But no matter which side we land, we should not be judgemental or prideful in our actions. Let the gospel offend, not the ideals of calvinism or armenianism.
Principles for architecting a church
The Bible says that Jesus is the Senior Pastor of every church—whether he’s given credit or not—and that he should be honored as such.
I have never thought of it that way, but it is very true. Jesus is the senior pastor. We need to look to him for leadership, for guidance. There is no one else qualified for such position. Only Jesus has full knowledge and control of the church and is the only one who can be trusted in prayer.
