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6.25.2013

The Unity of the Bible

Greetings All,

     This week's thought comes to you from a man named Daniel Fuller, in a superb book called, "The Unity of the Bible."  In his foreword to the book John Piper wrote in 1991: "No book besides the Bible has had a greater influence on my life than Daniel Fuller's 'The Unity of the Bible.' When I first read it... over twenty years ago, everything began to change... It changed my life because it is so honest. No hard questions are dodged. No troubling texts are swept under the carpet. There is a passion for seeing all Scripture as a whole."
     This selection compares Christianity with Islam, or more accurately, shows why Islam, in contrast to Christianity, is unable to truly satisfy the ultimate yearnings of the human heart. I found his insights fascinating. Enjoy.


Islam's Inability to Satisfy the Heart Fully
     "In perusing the paradise passages in the Koran, one notes that the ultimate blessings for the Muslim do not go beyond a superabundance of the most pleasurable things to be enjoyed in this life. There is no indication whatsoever that heaven's joys culminate in fellowship with God.
     In comparing Islam with Christianity, we may find it helpful to reflect on one of the 'thoughts' of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), the famous French Mathematician and philosopher. He wrote...'Man once possessed true happiness, of which nothing now remains except an empty trace which he vainly tries to fill out of his environment. Yet all these efforts are inadequate, because the infinite abyss [in the human soul] can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is, by God Himself'...
     This fits the testimony of the Bible which tells us that during this life, fellowship with God is the only thing that satisfies: 'Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever' (Psalm 73:25-26). The same great hope is held out for the hereafter: 'And I -- in righteousness -- I will see your face; when I awake I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness' (Psalm 17:15).
     As does the Koran, the Bible refers to heaven as a place free from the miseries of this world; only the heaven of the Bible, however, includes enjoyment of intimate fellowship with God... Pascal's reasoning seems sound that the inner desire of humankind can never be met by earthly pleasures, but only by such fellowship with God. How then could one living in a Muslim heaven find contentment for eternity doing nothing more than lounging in gardens through which cool streams flow, being served by diffident maidens? But to have fellowship with a God who is like Jesus Christ would constitute a joy that could never become commonplace.
     Why does the Koran lay no emphasis on the ultimate blessing of having fellowship with God? One plausible explanation is that the blessings of a Muslim heaven are regarded as wages paid by God. They honor the individual as a work-person who has had the skills, strength, and character necessary to meet some need in God the employer. So it would be incongruous in this system to consider fellowship with such a deficient God as a reward for one's praiseworthiness in meeting his [God's] needs.
     Precisely at this point the uniqueness of the God of the Bible becomes most evident. For he, 'is not served by human hands as if he needed anything' (Acts 17:25). To the contrary, this God works on behalf of, or for the benefit of, those who trust and hope in Him. And he is so complete in himself that in thus working he finds his greatest joy...
     Israel's religion was the direct opposite of those practiced by the surrounding peoples. In their religions God was the client for whom the people must work in order to get from him certain blessings regarded as wages, something earned. But for Israel it was just the reverse: Israel was to regard itself as the client for whom God was working as long as the people trustingly obeyed his divine directives for their welfare.
     So, when the situation in Islam is exactly reversed in Christianity, and God is the praiseworthy worker who meets the needs of his believing people, then having fellowship with such a God becomes most desirable. We can thus conclude that Islam, in comparison with Christianity, promises a heaven that falls far short of being what the human heart craves for most... We conclude, therefore, that the Bible, for whose truth we earlier provided sufficient evidence, sets forth a message well worth our expending the time and energy to understand.  Only by appropriating its message will the God-shaped vacuum of the heart be satisfied, completely and forever." 
     Psalm 16 affirms the truth of Fuller's premise: "You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand."   Psalm 27 does the same: "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I might dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek Him in His temple." 
     The God of the Bible is a God of grace who serves His people (undeserving as they are) -- carrying, upholding, and rescuing them (Is. 46:1-4). The God of Islam bears more the resemblance of a taskmaster demanding he be served.
     Likewise, once justified by faith in Christ, the Christian walks in grace, and has the blessed assurance that God accepts them and is pleased with them (Rom. 8:1-2 / 8:28-30 / I John 5:11-12). The Muslim on the other hand can never be sure.
     It's no wonder then that the ultimate treasure the heaven of the Bible promises is sweet and pleasurable fellowship with God, while the ultimate treasures of the heaven the Koran promises consists only a superabundance of earthly type delights with no mention of intimacy, pleasure, or fellowship with God.

     Pascal was right: "The infinite abyss [in the human soul] can only be filled with an infinite and immutable object, that is, God Himself" -- the God revealed to us in the Bible, and supremely in Jesus. He is what every soul truly craves, for He alone is able to satisfy the deepest yearnings of the soul, and restore the lost sense of happiness humanity once had when they walked in pleasant fellowship with Him in paradise.
     "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen." (Rom. 11:36)
He Himself is our great reward, Pastor Jeff

6.19.2013

Desiring God Daily Devotional

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' comes to you from a familiar source -- John Piper.  It's from his "Desiring God Daily Devotional" selection for June 16, 2013.
     As I have mentioned before, his book "Desiring God" is already (in my opinion) a spiritual classic, and a read that helped me immensely in my own walk with the Lord.
     I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to read a deep, well-reasoned, spiritually informative, personally formative and biblically-based summary of the Christian faith and life. Should one have adopted the erroneous notion that one cannot be intellectual, academic or highly intelligent and Christian at the same time, this book (along with any by C. S. Lewis, Ravi Zacharias, Os Guinness and others) will quickly disabuse you of that false notion.
     This selection has to do with correct and incorrect notions of God, and our responses to God in relation to them.  To heed Piper's words in this selection could save many a well-meaning Christian much fruitless effort and lead to far more praise and glory being given to God.  Enjoy.
"So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him."
(2 Corinthians 5:9)

     "What if you discovered (like the Pharisees did), that you had devoted your whole life to trying to please God, but all the while had been doing things that in God’s sight were abominations (Luke 16:14–15)?
     Someone may say, “I don’t think that’s possible; God wouldn't reject a person who has been trying to please him.” But do you see what this questioner has done? He has based his conviction about what would please God on his idea of what God is like. That is precisely why we must begin with the character of God.
     God is a mountain spring, not a watering trough. A mountain spring is self-replenishing. It constantly overflows and supplies others. But a watering trough needs to be filled with a pump or bucket brigade.

     If you want to glorify the worth of a watering trough you work hard to keep it full and useful. But if you want to glorify the worth of a spring you do it by getting down on your hands and knees and drinking to your heart’s satisfaction, until you have the refreshment and strength to go back down in the valley and tell people what you've found.
     My hope as a desperate sinner hangs on this biblical truth: that God is the kind of God who will be pleased with the one thing I have to offer — my thirst. That is why the sovereign freedom and self-sufficiency of God are so precious to me: they are the foundation of my hope that God is delighted not by the resourcefulness of bucket brigades, but by the bending down of broken sinners to drink at the fountain of grace."
     Piper's words mimic in an identical fashion the idea conveyed to us by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 46:1-4.  Read that passage, and contemplate what he's saying, and you will find yourself thanking God that you don't worship an idol (or a god) that needs you to serve it, but a God who is so infinitely adequate and self-complete that He offers to serve you instead of needing you (as with the idol's Bel and Nebo in Isaiah 46) to habitually serve them.
     Bel and Nebo were huge carved stone statues that had to be carried on carts (sometimes hundreds of miles) into battle by the soldiers. Picture it.  Their need to be "carried" made it exhausting to "serve" them, while the God of the Bible, out of the inexhaustible riches of who He is, offers instead to "carry" us.

Grateful we serve a God who is like a self-replenishing spring!  In Him, Pastor Jeff 

6.12.2013

Remember Jesus Christ

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' comes to you from an old book I purchased recently.  I started glancing through it and found this selection interesting -- from a historical and biblical perspective. In fact, if you are one of those people who idealizes the past as the "good old days" when everything was supposedly,  "the way it should be," when compared to today, you may be disappointed to discover otherwise!
     I'll save the date the book was published for the end so you can try to guess from its contents what era he is talking about. The title is "Remember Jesus Christ" and its author is Robert E. Speer.  [I have taken the liberty of condense and update the language while holding to the author's intent].  Enjoy.

Christ's Command to Believe

     "One of the most significant characteristics of the temper of our day is its dislike of the imperative mood. It does not like commands, or to be addressed in terms of, 'You must!'  It likes to be spoken of in other terms, such as, 'Will you not, if it pleases you?'... For the last few years in this land we have had abundant evidence of the dislike of great classes of men for enforced limitation, for obligation, for law. There is across the country an antagonism to obligation...
     The human will has never liked to limit its sovereignty, but it is quite clear that there is scarcely anything that is now as distasteful, especially in the sphere of religion, as the imperative mood. We are told that as far as religion is concerned, it must keep its hands off the rest of our life; that it is a matter altogether beyond reason, having no right whatsoever to coerce reason; and that it cannot say to people, 'you must.' 
     Yet it must at once occur to us that Christ speaks constantly in the imperative. We have it in these words: not, 'It is desirable, if you wish to have blessings, that you should have faith in God' -- but 'Have it.' 'Have faith in God.'
     And He not only uses the imperative in religion, but He uses it in the most objectionable sphere of religion - faith. 'It is all right,' some will declare, 'to say, 'Thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not,' in the sphere of conduct. But to tell us we must do certain things in the sphere of belief is absurd.'  They continue, 'How can God override all the laws of our lives by compelling us or ordering us to do things which, perhaps, in the very nature of our constitution, it may not be possible for us to do? We cannot intellectually assent to a proposition on orders.' 
     And yet, it is precisely on this matter of faith that the New Testament persists in putting the imperative... When the Philippian jailor asked Paul and Silas what he must do to be saved, they advised him in terms of a command: 'Believe!' This is a stumbling block to many, or at least to everyone who does not like obligation. But it is also a stumbling block to those who say that belief comes from having the facts laid before them, and that if belief does not spring up spontaneously from it, no amount of commanding it will create it.  That may be true if faith were to be defined as 'intellectual assent' and nothing more. But this is not an adequate definition. If it were, faith could not be commanded.
     Yet faith, primarily and essentially, is vital, moral -- a personal relationship -- and intellectual assent is a fruit of this relationship. When a child believes something which its father tells it, we call the child's acceptance an act of faith.  Yet it is not.  It is a fruit of faith.  Faith is the confidence which the child posits in its father, which leads it to believe in what the father says...
     If you will read through the New Testament carefully, you will see the commands to believe are used with reference to the moral and vital relationship every soul is summoned to recognize between himself and God [ie: I John 3:23 -- 'And this is God's command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another.']...
     And so Christ felt He had a right to order people to have faith, because it was not a matter, primarily, of their minds. He could and does order it because it is primarily a matter of moral character, of heart, of life, of personal relationship.

With that emphasis in mind, let us consider Christ's command as a fourfold call.

     FIRST of all, it is a call to a personal surrender to God. If you read through your New Testament you will find that in pretty nearly every case the root idea of the writer or the speaker is that there should be on the part of men, a moral surrender to God or to the personal truths of God.  'Believe   on the Lord Jesus Christ' means 'believe on Jesus as Lord; as the one who possesses you; as the one to whom you must make a personal surrender... In saying 'Have faith in God,' Jesus summons us to an unconditional, hold nothing back, irreversible, life-engulfing surrender to Him.

     SECOND, the words, 'Have faith in God,' are a call to intensity in service... Faith, Christ meant to tell them, links us so closely with God as to make us co-workers with Him to give us His power in the world, so that we work no longer with a human soul's strength only, but with the strength of God... Faith in God is a rest, surely enough, but it is also a life of power and a call to a life of intensity of service in which every faculty and gift of life must find play, transfigured and made a thousand fold more effective by the Spirit of Christ...

      THIRD, the call to 'have faith in God' is a call to confidence. It was not, 'Have speculations about God,' or, 'Have doubts regarding Him.'  The early church had an unqualified unhesitating message. 'Have faith in God' was its one word -- 'in God, and in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ'... The agnostic type mind was vexed by the positive certainty of the Christian doctrine and life. But the early church knew. It had faith, and spoke... So stand fast. Believe. Be not tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. Have faith in the eternal and trust-deserving God.
      Then LAST, Christ's command is a call to hopefulness... The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews conceives of faith as 'the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen'... He goes on to say to those struggling believers who lived by faith even though it resulted in their torture or death, 'God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city.'
     The Gentiles conceived of the night as coming after the day.  Day came first, night followed. Their golden age was behind. The good old days had passed. It was darkness ahead.  But for the Jew, the golden age was always to come. They left darkness (Egypt) behind... Day does not begin when morning comes. It ends in light.  The Genesis account says, 'there was evening and then there was morning, the first day' not, 'there was morning and then evening, the first day.'  The Christians brightest days are ahead.  Bonar expresses this truth in one of his hymns,
'Not first the bright, and after that the dark,
But first the dark, and after that the bright.
First the thick cloud, and then the rainbow's arc; 
First the dark grave, then resurrection light.'"

     Oh yes, I forgot to mention this was published in 1899.  One of those "not so good old days" when people from coast to coast (according to the author) had a loathing for imperatives, laws or commands (similar to our day)!
     Yet, in light of his last point, where he tells us the call to faith is a call to hopefulness, do we have that biblical mindset where we believe that day follows night, instead of night following day?
     Could it be that despite the present darkness, a morning is coming and light is just around the corner? Can we believe God to bring it about? Can we, "Have faith in God"? Or should I phrase it in that despised imperative tense -- people, "Have faith in God!" "Believe!"
It does make a difference. Yet as he notes, it all depends on that ever-necessary personal relationship with God.    Blessings on your day, Pastor Jeff

6.02.2013

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' is a bit different than most any one I have sent out before. The reason?  Because unlike the others I've sent which I have found edifying, challenging, or comforting -- and agree with -- this is one I send along because I find it rather sad. That is, I find the quote by Andy Stanley (in red) rather sad, not Carl Trueman's response to it (in blue). And the reason I find it so sad is because many pastors share Stanley's view.
     Thus I offer this post to you as both a heads up, and the critique of an attitude which I feel pastors and churches should not embrace (Stanley's), regardless of the number of people it may bring into their building.

Andy Stanley                                          Carl Trueman

 



    

     For the sake of space I have shortened Mr. Truman's response. If you desire to access the article in its entirety you may go to: www.reformation21.org, under, "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie," by Carl Trueman, Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary.

     His point is well-taken: Truth has never been popular (I Cor. 20-31), yet it is of utmost importance, and must be preached, even if the entire culture considers it irrelevant and boycotts the church until we change it to suit what they want to hear.  Enjoy.

     "For this month's column, I thought I would offer a few reflections on Andy Stanley's recent book, 'Deep and Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend.'  Here's a classic passage [from his book] which represents in miniature an entire universe of erroneous thinking.

     'People are far more interested in what works than what's true. I hate to burst your bubble, but virtually nobody in your church is on a truth quest. Including your spouse. They are on happiness quests. As long as you are dishing out truth with no 'here's the difference it will make' tacked on the end, you will be perceived as irrelevant by most of the people in your church, student ministry, or home Bible study. You may be spot-on theologically, like the teachers of the law in Jesus' day, but you will not be perceived as one who teaches with authority. Worse, nobody is going to want to listen to you.
     Now, that may be discouraging. Especially the fact that you are one of the few who is actually on a quest for truth. And, yes, it is unfortunate that people aren't more like you in that regard. But that's the way it is. It's pointless to resist. If you try, you will end up with a little congregation of truth seekers who consider themselves superior to all the other Christians in the community. But at the end of the day, you won't make an iota of difference in this world. And your kids... more than likely your kids, are going to confuse your church with the church and once they are out of your house, they probably won't visit the church house. Then one day they will show up in a church like mine and want to get baptized again because they won't be sure the first one took. And I'll be happy to pastor your kids. But I would rather you face the reality of the world we live in and adjust your sails. Culture is like the wind. You can't stop it. You shouldn't spit in it. But, if like a good sailor you will adjust your sails, you can harness the winds of culture to take your audience where they need to go. If people are more interested in being happy, then play to that. Jesus did." (Andy Stanley, Kindle 1216-1234)'
     To be sure, as grateful as I am to the Rev. Stanley for the offer to pastor my children, and for providing me with fascinating insights into the philosophical convictions my long-suffering wife, I cannot help but see this as a remarkably naïve piece of muddled thinking.

     With so much promising material, where should one start the critique? Perhaps with the unintended irony of a man warning his readers about feeling superior while at the same time assuring them that he has better insight into the way their spouses and congregations think than they do?

     Or with the odd way in which he berates his audience for making the mistake of assuming that other people are just like them rather than realizing that they are actually all just like Andy Stanley?...  One might also look at the travesty of scriptural teaching it contains. The problem of the teachers of the law, for example, was not that they were spot on; it was that they were completely wrong. That is why Jesus spent such a lot of time berating them for their errors of interpretation. And as to Jesus playing to people's expectations of happiness, one wonders why he made such 'play' of the havoc which following him would wreak on families, of the need to take up one's cross, and of the expectation of persecution to come...

     I will concede that Stanley is certainly right in his basic contention: people are not on a search for truth. The Apostle Paul articulated that well in Romans 1.  Stanley is also correct that truth is irrelevant to people, or at least they think it is irrelevant to them. Compared to Paul, Stanley 's statement on this issue is rather bland. Paul goes much further, declaring the truth, the message of the cross, to be intellectual foolishness to some and a moral offense to others (I Cor. 1). 

     It is not, however, Stanley 's blandness which is the real problem; it is the practical conclusion which he draws from this. For Paul, the offensiveness and irrelevance of the message of the cross demonstrate the fact that those who think in such ways are perishing. The problem is with them, and with their 'cultures,' not with the cross. For Stanley, by way of contrast, it is the 'culture' which is to set the agenda and to which the church must thus conform or die.
     Stanley 's pragmatism, in a manner analogous to the soft relativism of certain evangelical post-moderns  looks attractively plausible; yet this is only because it operates within the framework of... modern middle America... But if Stanley had the imagination to set this pragmatism in Nazi Germany or in a country where female circumcision is de rigueur, some place where middle class American tastes and preferences do not apply, then the cost of such intellectual and moral laziness would immediately become apparent. If you cannot stop culture and should not spit in it, what happens when the culture tells you that happiness comes about by gassing Jews or lacerating young girls' genitalia?  That is somebody's culture. No point trying to resist it for that would risk irrelevance, empty pews and feed an isolationist Pharisaism. And we couldn't have that, now, could we?

     Of course, one can already hear the pat responses of, 'It could never happen here!' or 'But that stuff is obviously wrong!'  Touching in its innocence and predictable in its complacency, such mewling would yet betray a shockingly shallow understanding of both human nature and history. No one in 1900 would have predicted that the most technologically and culturally advanced nation in Europe would elect a man like Hitler and be the centre of previously unimaginable genocide. Interesting what national military defeat, adverse economic conditions, and concerted anti-Semitic propaganda can do to a nation, is it not?... In the field of human ethical behavior, one should never say 'it' can never happen here, wherever you may be.
     And that is ultimately the saddest aspect of the Andy Stanleys of this world. It is not their patronizing attitude to others. It is not their arrogant assumption that they represent the culture or that they have the right to tell the rest of us how we should think. It is not the sloppy way they bandy words like 'culture' and even 'happiness' around without ever offering a definition of what they think they mean. It is not their crass prioritization of raw numbers. It is not their complete lack of imagination regarding the moral possibilities of 'culture.' Rather, it is the fact that what they confidently present as radical insights are really nothing but lazy, insipid, prosaic, and predictable capitulations to the values of the spirit of the age. In short, they are simply dressing up their society's tastes as absolute truth. Unimaginative, respectable, lazy and lethal. The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, is it not?"
     To add to Mr. Trueman's critique it must be pointed out that Jesus did not "play" to the predominant relativism of Greco-Roman culture. To a culture that thought there could be no definitive or universal truth (a belief summed up so succinctly in Pilate's words to Jesus at his trial, "What is truth?" ) Jesus continually said, "I tell you the truth...," "I tell you the truth...," I tell you the truth..."

     Despite their dislike for truth, and the fact that they also considered it irrelevant, Jesus continued to declare it throughout His ministry.  In fact, I believe His response to the issue of happiness would still be, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."
     What we need and what we think we need are often two different things -- which is why Jesus never did "play" to the relativism of the surrounding culture, but confirmed right to the very end: "I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."