Paul in Athens; you, me and Halloween

Had a conversation yesterday with a friend about Christianity and Halloween, and what the Christian response to or involvement with Halloween should be.  In other words, should we acknowledge its legitimacy, engage in its festivities, and dress up in costumes and go door-to-door in search of free candy?  As I understood him, his reasoning for partaking in Halloween was to be involved with our culture and its people and use that as a platform for the gospel.  That – and acquiring a year’s supply of Reeses peanut butter cups!  Now that is potentially legitimate, although we should, at a minimum, ponder how far we can engage in the culture before our Christianity is compromised and we blend in so well that our pagan friends and neighbors see no difference between us and them, between our lives and their lives.

I’ll come right out and say it that my position in this discussion is that Halloween is a pagan festival (holiday, celebration, etc.) and that Christ-followers probably should not engage in its festivities, however “innocent” those festivities may seem to be.  Later in the day the thought occurred to me that when Paul was in Athens (Acts 17:16 – 34) he didn’t join in with what the Athenians were doing.  Rather, he saw that their “city was full of idols,” and “his spirit was provoked within him.”  Provoked?  Yeah, he was not happy.  And he did not join them in what they were doing.

So what did he do?

Jesus Saves from the American Dream

DWYL (Don’t Waste Your Life) has a collection of eight wallpapers such as this one that are available as free downloads.  Check them out and use them as a reminder of what your life is for.  Click here or on the picture above to go to the download site.

If there had been television in 1517

 

This comic showed up on one of our tests in The History of Western Christianity back in Bible college.  Thanks Dr. Bierma – this is classic!

30 Years as a Pastor

Today’s post from Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds is a well-written testimony to the grace of God in one man’s life.  Click through to see a photo of Piper from 30 years ago — stay there and read the post.  30 Years Ago Today: How God Called John Piper to Become a Pastor

Hors d’oeuvres anyone?

I’m reading Peace Like a River by Leif Enger again, this time taking it slower and savoring as I read.  And it’s worthy of savoring.  Here’s a taste:

Cresting a long hill we stopped a moment while Fry [a horse] blew and stooped and clipped at the snow as though for browse.  I let go of Davy to sit straight.  I can’t describe what we saw.  Here was the whole dizzying sky bowled up over us.  We were inside the sky.  It didn’t make the stars any closer, only clearer.  They burned yellow and white, and some of them changed to blue or a cold green or orange — Swede should’ve been there, she’d have had words.  She’d have known that orange to be volcanic or forgestruck or a pinprick between our blackened world and one the color of sunsets.  I thought of God making it all, picking up handfuls of whatever material, iron and other stuff, rolling it in His fingers like nubby wheat.  The picture I had was of God taking these rough pellets by the handful and casting them gently, like a man planting.  Look at the Milky Way.  It has that pattern, doesn’t it, of having been cast there by the back-and-forward sweep of His arm?

These are for Andy

My friend Andy stopped by the blog the other day and did some reading.  Later he told me that he’d like to see some more pictures here, so these are for him.  Of course, if it’s pictures you’re after and not so much reading you could always visit the other blog, though I’m a couple months behind on updating that one.

Most of my library

“Night” by Elie Wiesel

Invested a couple hours this afternoon and read Night by Elie Wiesel.  I can’t remember if I read this book in a high school or college Literature class.  If I didn’t it should have been in the curriculum.

Night is an open door into the Holocaust through the eyes, no, through the very life of one of its survivors.  It is a perspective of that “event” I have not encountered until now.  Perhaps not many who lived through it as prisoners in concentration camps could find the words to describe their experience.  Perhaps not many wanted to.  But Wiesel has and Night is his story.  If you haven’t read it, do.

How about an excerpt?  How to choose?  To reach in and pull out a piece of one man’s experience of the darkness that is evil and place it onto a blog page.  Nevertheless, here is my selection:

;)

We need more Aquilas and Priscillas

One of these days I’m planning to write a few blog posts about ‘work’ and the biblical way to think about it.  This is not that day, though perhaps this coming winter I’ll find the time to tackle that task.  In the meantime this post will have to do.

So what do you do when you seem to have a compelling desire to be actively involved in Christian ministry and it seems that one of your spiritual gifts is in the area of teaching but God hasn’t seen fit to place you in an “official” capacity in a church or other Christian ministry?  And what if you also have a God-given entrepreneurial spirit and drive.

I suppose you could do what I’ve done and start a construction company (9 years running next month) and just recently, a website design, development, and hosting company.  Coupled with those ventures you could also start (plant) a church (which I haven’t done) or get involved in a church plant that’s only a couple years old (which I/we have done).

The more things change…nah, things don’t change

Most of Nehemiah chapter nine is a prayer of confession that’s worth reading and thinking about.

Things really haven’t changed all that much — God is still “ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love,” not forsaking his people.  And people?  “[T]hey ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in [God's] great goodness.  Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against [God] and cast [his] law behind their back and killed [his] prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to [him], and they committed great blasphemies.”

Nah, things don’t change.

The apostle Paul, the church in Colossae, and the rest of us

Andy, our pastor, is out of town this weekend for the state swim meet and he asked me to preach in his place.  I said I would, Lord willing (!), and as far as I know I’ll be preaching page one of Colossians.  Page one in my Bible is Colossians 1:1 through 2:5, and that amounts to the “indicative” part of the letter — the part where Paul tells us “what is.”  In 2:6 he starts with a “therefore” and so begins the “imperative” part of the letter, telling us “what should be” because of “what is.”

What drew me to page one is the way that Paul seems to weave the gospel through that whole section – starting with the effect of the gospel in the lives of the believers in Colossae, then on to the heart of the gospel in the supremacy of Jesus Christ in creating all things and in saving people like you and me who were hostile towards God, and finally to the continuation of the gospel in time and the world through the proclaiming of Christ by people like Paul and so many others after him.

So I was reading through the chapter on Colossians in An Introduction to the New Testament by Don Carson, Doug Moo and Leon Morris, and it seemed to me that their summary paragraphs were worth repeating here:

Time to wake up, American Christians

Some things need to be repeated often until Jesus returns and this world as we know it comes to an end and evil is no more.  Until then, the incredible need for ministries like Make Way Partners is one of those things.  Click on the newsletter image to go to the full PDF version, read it, and then decide to make a difference before it’s too late for you and for those you could have helped.

And you know, you may not fully agree with some of the theology of the people behind Make Way Partners or other similar ministries — I don’t, and I tend to be a “truth” guy.  But the 9-year-old orphan that we’ve “adopted” and are supporting monthly isn’t very concerned about our theology.  What’s important to her at this point is that she has food to eat, a bed to sleep in, she’s no longer in danger of being killed by wild dogs while she’s sleeping on the ground or in a tree, and the likelihood of her being captured and forced into the horrors of slavery is almost gone.  Do I care about her spiritual life?  Definitely, and our family prays regularly that she will come to believe the gospel and know Jesus Christ as he is revealed in the truth of Scripture.

Jesus, who refers to himself as “the way, the truth and the life” in John 14:6, said in Matthew 25 that “he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’. . . ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’

Yeah, time to wake up.

July 2009 Make Way Partners newsletter

More of “The Pleasures of God” in creation

I finished reading chapter three of The Pleasures of God this morning while sitting in a familiar place, and the chapter is called “The Pleasure of God in His Creation.”  It’s all good, but here are some really good portions.  The italics are Piper’s emphasis, not mine.

The message of creation is this: there is a great God of glory and power and generosity behind all this awesome universe; you belong to him; he is patient with you in sustaining your rebellious life; turn and bank your hope on him and delight yourself in him, not his handiwork. Day pours forth the “speech” of that message to all that will listen in the day, speaking with blindingly bright sun and blue sky and clouds and untold shapes and colors of all things visible.  Night pours forth the “knowledge” of the same message to all who will listen at night, speaking with great dark voids and summer moons and countless stars and strange sounds and cool breezes and northern lights.  Day and night are saying one thing: God is glorious!  God is glorious!  God is glorious!

This is the most basic reason that God delights in his creation.  In creation he sees the reflection of his own glory.  This is why he is not an idolater when he has pleasure in the work of his hands.

A few pages further in he writes this about the parts of creation that we as humans aren’t even aware of yet:

This is what moves the psalmist in Psalm 148:7, “Praise the LORD you sea monsters and all deeps!”  He doesn’t even know what is in all the deeps of the sea!  So the praise of the deeps is not merely what they can testify to man.  Creation praises God by simply being what it was created to be in all its incredible variety.  And since most of the creation is beyond the awareness of mankind (in the reaches of space, and in the heights of mountains and at the bottom of the sea) it wasn’t created merely to serve purposes that have to do with us.  It was created for the enjoyment of God.

Clay pots

I am constantly amazed that the one and only sovereign God who created the universe bothers to use clay pots like you and me to help each other along the way of life.

A heart truly beating for God

I read this passage this morning from 1 Chronicles 28:9-10…

And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought.  If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever.  Be careful now, for the LORD has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary; be strong and do it.

Those three sentences are overflowing with truth, doctrine, and instruction, and are just begging to be unpacked.  Knowing God (really knowing him), spiritual wholeness, God’s omniscience (he knows everything, even our thoughts), God’s accessibility (if we seek him we will find him), a warning (forsake him and he will cast us off forever), and God’s sovereignty (he chose Solomon, and everyone else who will ever follow him).

The parallel passage is in 1 Kings 2:2-4, and the Expositor’s Bible Commentary says this about the 1 Kings passage:

There can be no doubt that much of Solomon’s early spiritual vitality and dedication to God may be attributed to David’s deep personal relationship to his Lord and his desire to honor him.  Proverbs 4:3-9 indicates that David spent time with Solomon as he was growing up, teaching and admonishing him from the Word of God.

It is clear from 1 Chronicles 22 – 29 that David did everything in his power to smooth the way for Solomon to follow him as king . . . in admonishing and encouraging Solomon to carry out faithfully the task committed to him.  In Solomon, David found a responsive and humble heart.  Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah, Solomon’s three older brothers, were spiritually and morally deficient; but Solomon had a heart prepared by God, and he responded willingly to David’s instruction.

David’s legacy to Solomon was thus much more than a great kingdom with secure borders, tributary nations, and considerable wealth and prestige.  Far more importantly he instilled in Solomon a love for God and his Word.  He gave to Solomon a proper orientation to life and leadership and was himself an outstanding role model, despite his failures, of a man whose heart truly beat for God.

A heart truly beating for God.  What would it take to have one?  At least three things: being physically alive, immersion in the Word of God, and preparation of our hearts by God himself.  Being alive is the easy part — we’re already there, but not for long (life is short).  The Word of God is very accessible in today’s world (here in America, at least), and we all have time to read it.  Whether or not we do is dependent on our own time management . . . and on our desire for it, which ultimately is given to us by God.  What can we do about that one?  We can “pray our hearts out,” asking him to give us that heart — a heart truly beating for God.

Libertinism, legalism, or love…is anyone else confused?

All right.  I’ve been pondering this question for a lot of years now, and I sometimes think I’m no closer to an answer than I was when this first came to my mind.  The question is this, “Does it matter how a Christian lives or not?”  My inclination is to say, “Of course it does!”, but I guess I’ve been exposed to enough “libertine” influences through the years to pause and wonder.

Consider the following:

In chapter one, “How Good is Good Enough?” of his book The Discipline of Grace, Jerry Bridges writes this on page 15:

Such a reply reveals an all-too-common misconception of the Christian life: the thinking that, although we are saved by grace, we earn or forfeit God’s blessings in our daily lives by our performance.

He goes on to say in the book that many Christians think the gospel is for the unsaved and not for the saved.  He says this is faulty thinking and that Christians should preach the Gospel to themselves every day, since the Gospel and the work of Christ on the cross is the basis for our standing and acceptance with God.  I agree, but what I’m getting tripped up on is saying that “earning or forfeiting God’s blessings in our daily lives by our performance” is a misconception.  And here’s why:

Who or what are you thirsty for?

Psalm 63 comes about as close to true worship and to the heart of true religion as a person can get.  The first verse reads like this:

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

In his expositional commentary on the Psalms, James Montgomery Boice started his exposition of this Psalm with this paragraph:

There are three types of people in any Christian gathering.  There are those who are Christians in name only.  They seem to be following after God and Jesus Christ and say they are, but theirs is a false following, like that of the five foolish virgins who did not truly know the Lord and were rejected by him.  The second class are those who are following Jesus but are following “at a distance,” like Peter at the time of Jesus’ arrest.  The third type are those who, as Murdoch Campbell suggests, “in storm and sunshine, cleave to him and enjoy daily communion with him.”  These people want God, and they want him intensely, because they know that he and he alone will satisfy the deep longing of their souls.  David was a person who desired God above everything else, and Psalm 63 is a classic expression of this longing.

Which begs the question, which one are you?  Which one am I?  Some people will never move beyond being Christian in name only, and theirs is a sad fate, one which Jesus warned about constantly (Matthew 7:13-14; 21-23; 25:31-46).  Once a person moves into the second stage of truly following Jesus, there is no going back, but the way forward can be slow and difficult.  The obstacles and diversions in this life, especially in this modern technological age, are almost beyond measure.  I suspect that those who have experienced the third stage are not there constantly, but are moving back and forth between the second and third.  That has been my experience anyway, but the fault is mine alone and not God’s.  He never changes.  My will and my desire and my devotion are often as steady as water and stable as quicksand.

I am not alone.  John Newton, author of the song “Amazing Grace,” also wrote these lines:

Strange and mysterious is my life;
What opposites I feel within!
A stable peace, a constant strife;
The rule of grace, the power of sin;
Too often I am captive led,
Yet often triumph in my Head.

I prize the privilege of prayer,
But O what backwardness to pray!
Though on the Lord I cast my care,
I feel its burden every day;
I’d seek his will in all I do,
Yet find my own is working too.

I call the promises my own,
And prize them more than mines of gold;
Yet though their sweetness I have known,
They leave me unimpressed and cold;
One hour upon the truth I feed,
The next I know not what I read.

Thus different powers within me strive,
And grace and sin by turns prevail;
I grieve, rejoice, decline, revive,
And victory hangs in doubtful scale;
But Jesus has his promise passed
That grace shall overcome at last.

The sound of silence – more than many can handle but something we all need

Justin Taylor has a recent blog post called The Sound of Silence and in it he has a link to a reflection by Al Mohler on an essay by Susan Hill.  The closing paragraph of her essay reads like this:

If children do not learn to focus and concentrate in a pool of quietness, their minds become fragmented and their temperaments irritable, their ability to absorb knowledge and sift it, grade it and evaluate it do not develop fully. Reading a book quietly, watching a raindrop slide slowly down a windowpane or a ladybird crawl up a leaf, trying to hear the sound of a cat breathing when it is asleep, asking strange questions, such as, “Where do all the colours go at night?” and speculating about the possible answers — all of these are best done in silence where the imagination can flourish and the intricate minutiae of the world around us can be examined with the greatest concentration. If there is a constant jazzy buzz from which no one ever frees them, and which distracts and diverts until they are confused and then rendered punch-drunk by aural stimuli, children become unsettled and anxious — and life is an anxious business for them at the best of times. We are responsible for giving them the great gift of time spent in silence so that they can begin to understand and experience its healing properties and become aware that it will always be there for them to draw upon, if they are only taught how to find it. Once they have, they will never lose the longing for periods of silence or, when they have attained them, the enrichment they bring. We must not deprive them of this as we have, though perhaps unknowingly, deprived them of so much else.

This reminds me of something I read in 1 Kings 19 a few days ago about one time when God spoke to the prophet Elijah — in the sound of a low whisper.

The Pleasure of God in His Creation

Started chapter 3 — “The Pleasure of God in His Creation” — of The Pleasures of God this morning, and as I was reading and looking up at the small portion of his creation that I am privileged to see every morning, I couldn’t resist breaking out the camera and taking a few photos.  Here’s what my reading spot on the front deck looks like in early summer…

The Infinitely Complex Emotional Life of God

I’m still reading — slowly — through The Pleasures of God by John Piper.  At the end of Chapter 2 is a short section with the same title as this blog post, “The Infinitely Complex Emotional Life of God.”  In this chapter Piper has been wrestling with the simultaneous ideas of God not taking pleasure in all he does (Ezekiel 18:23, 32) and God doing all that he pleases (Psalm 135:6).  Here’s an excerpt:

God’s emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend.  For example, who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of 10 million Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one personally and individually as a caring Father (as Hebrews 4:15 says), even though among those 10 million prayers some are brokenhearted and some are bursting with joy?  How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they are both coming to him at the same time — in fact, are always coming to him with no break at all?  Or who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet every day, every moment, he is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7, 10, 23)?  Who can comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the rebellion of the wicked and grieves over the unholy speech of his people (Ephesians 4:29-30), yet takes pleasure in them daily (Psalm 149:4), and ceaselessly makes merry over penitent prodigals who come home?  Who of us could dare say what complex of emotions is not possible for God?  All we have to go on here is what he has chosen to tell us in the Bible.  And what he has told us is that there is a sense in which he does not experience pleasure in the judgment of the wicked, and there is a sense in which he does.

Someone has pointed out, and I don’t remember where I heard or read this, that one of the infinite number of differences between us and God is that we can only have and/or experience one emotion at a time, whereas God, as Piper showed above, experiences the entire range of emotions every single moment.

And along these lines, there is only one true multitasker in the universe — and that’s God.  The rest of us who attempt it are only play-acting.

Just one more of the innumerable reasons to give glory to God.

Amusing ourselves to death — in pictures

Earlier this year I wrote a post called “I wonder what Neil Postman is thinking about all this?” and in that post I quoted from Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death where he compares George Orwell and Aldous Huxley and their visions of the future.  For those of us who don’t like to read, here’s a link to a pictorial explanation of the difference between the two authors and why Huxley had the greater clarity of vision.  Oh, and it’s also helpful for those of us who do like to read.

A Copernican revolution in discerning the will of God, or just an ages-old Biblical concept in a new light

I just finished reading a new book by Kevin DeYoung called Just Do Something: A liberating approach to finding God’s will; or how to make a decision without dreams, visions, fleeces, impressions, open doors, random Bible verses, casting lots, liver shivers, writing in the sky, etc. Long title for a not-so-long book (122 pages).  This book reminds me of another book on the topic I mostly read this past fall/winter by Bruce Waltke — Finding the Will of God: a pagan notion? Waltke’s book is a little longer (187 pages), but still not a long book.  Seems to be a recurring pattern here, and I’m reminded also of Sinclair Ferguson’s short book Discovering God’s Will from back in the early 80s.  If this pattern means anything, it is that finding the will of God for our lives is not a complex matter.

The last paragraph in Just Do Something sums up this idea and the book very nicely, though there is still more to the book than the summary.  Never the less, here’s the final paragraph:

So the end of the matter is this: Live for God.  Obey the Scriptures.  Think of others before yourself.  Be holy.  Love Jesus.  And as you do these things, do whatever else you like, with whomever you like, wherever you like, and you’ll be walking in the will of God.

I’ll admit that over the years I’ve done some serious searching for God’s will for my life, though in retrospect I’d consider that pursuit to be mostly a waste of time and effort.  A few years ago I started getting my head on straight (in my current opinion) and began to live out what DeYoung is advocating in his book: don’t neglect your sanctification, and just do something.

A choice we all make

I was sitting on the front deck this morning, watching the world come alive, reading from Revelation 4 – 5 and 19 – 22, and contemplating the present reality of the glorified Jesus Christ, who he is, and what is still to come for this world and all who are in it.

Those thoughts led me to think about this past Wednesday when I taught on James 4:1-10.  Verse four of that passage reads, “You adulterous people!  Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?  Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”  Part of our discussion that evening was what it means to be a friend of the world or a friend with God, and how it seems to be a line that we are prone to blur in our daily lives.

Friendship in the ancient world was an idea that included deep fellowship, loyalty, and the sharing of all things.  James didn’t expect us to isolate ourselves from the world, and neither did Jesus, Paul, or John for that matter — but they all warned us about becoming friends with the world and its systems and values.

Just knowing that James describes each of us as being (at times?) spiritually unfaithful (adulterous) to God and warns us about becoming or even wanting to be friends with the world and enemies of God should cause us concern.  I believe wholeheartedly in the perseverance of the (true) saints, but I also read in the Bible the warnings about apostasy and the need for endurance such as this one in Revelation 14:12: “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.”

Here’s a real-world example from a letter we received this week from Grace to You:

Division AND Truth (notice the conjunction)

Lord willing, I’ll be teaching on James 3:13-18 tomorrow evening.  Part of my preparation was to read J. A. Motyer’s commentary on James from The Bible Speaks Today series.  He made an observation about division and truth that is worth repeating:

Church history would have a very different tale to tell — as would, indeed, the bit of church history that is being written in our own day — if Christian people had paid attention to the fact that James contrasts division and truth.  Over and over again the formation of a party, the growth of a clique, the promotion of a split have been justified as standing for the truth.  It is said that, unless we divide, the truth cannot be safeguarded; the body from which we are dividing has rejected all truth, or this truth or that.  But when Paul withstood Peter to the face over the really cardinal issue of the truth of the gospel (Gal. 2:14), he did not separate, form a party, send word to the churches he had founded that they were now a new denomination.  The sad thing is that we who are born into a divided, wretchedly denominational situation are inured from birth to separation, and we have lost James’ realization that in Christian division, as in time of war, truth is the first casualty.

Which reminds me of something Francis Schaeffer once said. . . . “Truth doesn’t depend on agreeing with me.”

Being the sovereign ruler of the universe is no big deal to God

I was reading The Pleasures of God by John Piper this evening and he quoted this paragraph by C. S. Lewis:

To be sovereign of the universe is no great matter to God. . . . We must keep always before our eyes that vision of Lady Julian’s in which God carried in His hand a little object like a nut, and that nut was “all that was made.”  God who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them.

You, me, the entire universe resting in the palm of God’s hand.  Nothing happens he doesn’t know about, and nothing happens that he doesn’t allow, for reasons that are usually not clear to us though they are, were, and always will be to him.  How can we not trust that sovereign God?