Salvation By Grace

Harry Reeder: Cultural Narcissism and a Titanic Lesson

Harry — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 21:09:08 +0000

“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21

In the inky darkness of April 15, 1912, the Titanic, billed as “the ship that even God could not sink,” plunged into the icy waters of the North Atlantic, its hull split in two. Amazingly, the lost consisted of men from every imaginable station and season of life, including some who were multi-billionaires. The lifeboats were overwhelmingly populated by women and children from every sphere of society. These phenomena became irresistible subjects of analysis in the media and even in the academy during the ensuing days. The critically acclaimed and highly publicized movie Titanic (1997) attempted to re-create this historical event. The film, billed as a technological and cinematic success, was a factual failure, inaccurately portraying the narrative of that fateful night.

The revisionist script attempted to present the disaster as an example of “class warfare.” A tawdry, adulterous love story between a woman of soci¬ety and a lower-class immigrant was invented for the movie. There was also a fictional portrayal of the cultural elite oppressing the lower classes in the bowels of the ship, enabling them (as the privileged) to escape in the precious few lifeboats.

Actually, the filmmakers missed a great opportunity. On that floating microcosm of opulence, consumerism, and elitism, an amazing event transpired. Men of power and prestige sacrificed their lives for women and children of the lower class, many of whom were indentured servants, day laborers, and domestic workers. On this flotilla of self-absorption, self-sacrifice became a prevailing virtue during a crisis moment, and the powerful chose death that the powerless might receive life.

The analysis in the following days persistently asked the obvious question: “Why?” The answer, almost universally acknowledged — even by the agnostic and secularist — was the undeniable influence of Christianity. The Christian virtue of self-sacrifice for the well-being of others and the biblical imperative for men to lay down their lives for women and children were chosen instead of self-preservation. These virtues triumphed in the context of real life-and-death choices on the Titanic. Could the same permeating virtues be propagated in today’s culture, which is marked by self-absorption, self-gratification, and self-exaltation? Scripture and history say yes. Yet, Scripture and history also say that such gospel-driven transformation will not happen in this world until it has taken hold in Christ’s church.

The contemporary culture flounders in a sea of narcissism, yet the contemporary church is likewise floundering in the exaltation of self and the supremacy of personal idolatry. Many churches (and, therefore, their members) long ago abandoned the gospel call “not [to] be conformed to this world but [to] be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:1-2). The church no longer shapes the world because it is being shaped by the world. Today’s church cannot suppress, much less transform, the disastrous effects of narcissism in the culture because narcissism is unsuppressed and flourishing within its own ministerial borders. The evidences of self-absorption within the church are undeniable and on the verge of going viral.

The contemporary church, in an effort to be relevant and connected, has in many cases become irrelevant and disconnected by accommodating itself to the demanded cultural narcissism. Today’s church, instead of speaking the true gospel message in terms the culture understands, has been seduced and intimidated into modifying the gospel message according to what the culture approves. Thus, we insist on the supremacy of personal musical genre preferences in worship. Our children exist to achieve academic and athletic honors in order to promote our parental pride. Marriage partners, instead of being the subjects of our sacrificial love, have become objects to be used then discarded. Our careers are instruments for conspicuous consumerism instead of opportunities to create wealth and gather resources for the needy. Our local churches are viewed as religious “specialty shops” for life’s challenges. Gospel preaching has been perverted into self-esteem therapy or pep talks, coaching us to worldly success or, even more astonishing, redefining the love of Christ in terms that preclude His displeasure with the impenitent self-centeredness in our lives. Our pursuit of personal happiness and gratification has superseded God’s call to be holy and magnify His glory. The first question of our new catechism is now, “What is the chief end of God?” The answer: “To love me and make me happy.” Our conformity to the world and our loss of the clear gospel call to follow Christ and to die to ourselves and our sins have rendered believers and the church thermometers of the culture instead of thermostats within the culture.

There is a titanic lesson to be learned from the Titanic. During a moment of crisis, a virtue that is alien to fallen humanity permeated the collective culture on the Titanic. Sacrifice prevailed instead of narcissism because the gospel call to self-denial formed the lives of believers throughout society. A watching world had been affected as they observed Christ followers, imperfectly yet intentionally, embrace the gospel blessing: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21).

Christ’s church proclaims a gospel message that is vibrantly clear and non-negotiable: Come to Christ, the One who denied Himself, laid aside the riches of glory, and humbled Himself for death on a cross in order that we might be rescued and given life eternal. This Christ, who freely receives you by faith and repentance, calls you to follow Him and to die to self that others might be rescued through you. What an extraordinary and amazing act of God’s love for us. Yet, it was not done first to exalt us, but to humble us and to kill us so that we might exalt the One who will exalt us at the right time. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). The narcissism of the world can be suppressed and even transformed, but it must first be confronted in us as we, who are saved by grace, say no to the world’s deceitful call of self-worship and yes to Christ’s liberating call of self-denial. This is a liberation that will allow us to make much of Christ, who did much to save us.

From March 2012 Tabletalk Magazine from Ligonier Ministries

Burk Parsons: Theological Narcissism

Harry — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 20:54:50 +0000

According to Greek mythology, Narcissus was a hunter from Thespia renowned for his beauty. His enemy, Nemesis, lured the arrogant Narcissus to a pool of water where he gazed at his own reflection and became utterly infatuated with the image in the pool, not realizing it was his own reflection. Enraptured with himself, Narcissus could not escape the beauty of his own reflection and eventually died.

We are all like Narcissus. We are infatuated with ourselves — obsessed with our own image. However, we’re not satisfied merely to bask in our own importance, we want everyone around us to be as enamored with us as we are with ourselves, and, what’s more, we want God Himself to be so taken with us that He makes all His thoughts revolve around us as if we were the center and ultimate end of all His plans. Our self-centeredness is the heart of our pride and the foundation of our rebellion against God. We not only want to know as God knows, we want to inform God in what He knows.

Just as our archnemesis deceived our first parents, so we, too, often fall prey to his schemes when we ignore God’s law, negotiate our selfish desires with God, compromise His truth, rationalize oursin, and then attempt to hide from Him by closing our eyesand pretending He doesn’t see us. In our natural arrogance, we are easily lured by our self-seeking hearts to look inward — at our wisdom, our accomplishments, our possessions — instead of fixing our eyes on God alone. Our narcissistic self-preoccupation constantly draws our eyes from the Creator to the creature, from God to self. As a result, we begin to develop our own personalized theology, making for ourself a god in our own image, fashioning him to be everything we thought we ever wanted in a god — a god who loves whom we love and hates whom we hate, a god who is sovereign over all the good things in our lives but helpless and ignorant of all the bad things that happen to us, a god who serves us at our every beck and call as if he were our own personal cosmic bellhop in the sky who comes grovelling at the slightest ring of a bell.

Such individualistic theology is, by nature, non-covenantal, non-familial, and non-ecclesiastical. It’s a theology centered around what makes sense to me, what seems fair to me, what makes me happy, and what makes me feel good about myself. Simply put, self-centered theology sees man as big and God as small.

But God, in His sovereign love for us, fixed His eyes on us as His Bride, condescended to our weakness and self-centered arrogance, dwelt among us, lived for us, served us, and gave Himself for us — and He did it all for our eternal good and His eternal glory.

From March 2012 Tabletalk Magazine by Ligonier Ministries

David Murray: Brandwashing and Biblewashing

Harry — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 20:47:29 +0000

You may not know it, but you’ve been “brandwashed,” probably multiple times, especially if you’ve shopped at whole foods market. Martin Lindstrom made time’s 2009 “world’s most influential people” list partly due to his book buyology: truth and lies about why we buy. His latest book, brandwashed, highlights “the tricks that companies use to manipulate our minds and persuade us to buy.” Lindstrom is a fan of Whole Foods and loves their produce, but in a recent Lifehacker column, he used the company as an example of the “many strategies retailers use to encourage us to spend more than we need to — more than we want to.” Consider these examples from Whole Foods’ New York City store:

The escalator brings us straight into a realm of freshly cut flowers, immediately priming us to think of freshness, a suggestion that we carry with us subconsciously as we shop.
The prices for the flowers, fresh fruit, and vegetables are scrawled in produced; the “slate” is plastic; the prices set at the chain’s Texas headquarters; and the “chalk” is indelible.
The stacked “crates” of melons are actually one large cardboard box that has been designed to reinforce the idea of “rustic old-time simplicity.”

And Whole Foods is just one example.

BRAINWASHING

Try to imagine how much you’ve been shaped by a lifetime of “brandwashing.” Frightening, isn’t it?

However, the effectiveness of commercial “brandwashing” should highlight our vulnerability to something far more insidious and evil — spiritual brainwashing. If retailers’ marketing strategies are so successful in taking our cash from us, how much more successful is the far less obvious and yet far more powerful priming and seducing we are continually experiencing at the hands of the master marketer, the Devil.

Day after day, in both our conscious and subconscious minds, the Evil One is brainwashing us with multiple covert and overt messages. Do you question his power or doubt your own weakness? Well, consider the experiment conducted by illusionist Derren Brown, who set out to prove just how susceptible we are to the thousands of signals we are exposed to each day.

Brown invited two advertising creatives to visit his office to discuss some marketing ideas. On their journey across town, Brown arranged for carefully placed clues to appear surreptitiously on posters and balloons, in shop windows, and on t-shirts worn by passing pedestrians. When they arrived, the two creatives were given twenty minutes to come up with a campaign for a fictional taxidermy store. Brown also gave them a sealed envelope that was only to be opened once they had presented their campaign. Twenty minutes later, they presented and then opened the envelope. Their plans for the taxidermy store were remarkably similar to the ad campaign that Brown designed, with an astounding 95 percent overlap.

If Derren Brown can do that to advertisers, think what the Devil can do to you. What’s the solution?

BIBLEWASHING

God has provided His Word to protect and purge us from the Devil’s brainwashing. The Bible helps us see the existence of diabolical brainwashing. It gives us a second sense, an ability to discern, a faculty of seeing that enables us to distinguish reality from perception.

The Bible also teaches the easiness of brainwashing. It explains and demonstrates how weak and seducible we are. That’s painful and humbling. But at least it puts us on the alert; it shows us our need of outside help.

The Bible analyzes the elements of brainwashing. It uncovers a number of the Devil’s strategies, both by numerous descriptions and by fearful examples. It helps us detect his first advances before he gets a foothold in our minds.

The Bible underlines the evil of spiritual brainwashing. We don’t just risk losing a few dollars as a result of succumbing to a marketing technique. We risk losing our own souls. The stakes could not be higher.

The Bible shows the way of escape from the Devil’s brainwashing. When we hear the world’s cry, “Conform! Conform! Conform!” we turn to our Bibles and read not only “do not be conformed” but also “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). In fact, if we read the Bible with faith and prayer, our minds will be so renewed that we can eventually say with the Apostle Paul: “We have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16).

From December 2012 Tabletalk Magazine

The Depth of Our Sin (from Tabletalk)

Harry — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:52:20 +0000

ROMANS 3:9-18 “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (vv. 10-12).

Try as we might, it is very difficult for human beings to come to grips with the fact that we do not deserve heaven. The average person, perhaps even the average professing Christian, is likely to say God should let him into heaven because he tries his best to be good and do the right thing. We have an innate tendency to believe we will get into heaven as long as our good works outweigh our bad deeds.

Of course, in comparison to someone like Adolf Hitler, most of us could be described as “good,” relatively speaking. However, God does not measure our goodness or righteousness by a relative standard but by the absolute standard of His own character and law. As we have seen, this standard is perfection, which is why Paul can look at the world and say that no person is righteous even if we see unbelievers do noble and honorable things from time to time (Rom. 3:9-12). Moreover, Jesus tells us quite explicitly that we “must be perfect, as [our] heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). God will not grade on a curve — we can pass His test and enter heaven by our works only if we never disobey Him (Gal. 5:3). If we commit only one “minor” transgression while we walk the earth, we have fallen short of infinite perfection and deserve an infinite judgment. This is the state in which all natural-born descendants of Adam find themselves (Gen. 8:21; Isa. 64:6-7; Matt. 13:40-42; Rom. 3:23).

Christ alone has met God’s standard of perfection (1 Peter 2:22), and that is why we can be considered the righteousness of God only if we are in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus shows us in the Sermon on the Mount that righteousness means conforming to God’s law both in its letter and in its spirit (Matt. 5:21-26), and we have failed in this task miserably. If we think that we have kept the Lord’s commandments, let us read Christ’s call never to put anyone or anything before Him (Matt. 10:37). To consider this command honestly is to realize that none but Christ have followed God so perfectly.

Born in sin, we cannot keep the law of God with our heart, soul, mind, or strength. The fallen nature we inherit from Adam (Rom. 3:9-18; 5:12-21) keeps us from wanting to serve Him of our own accord. Only Jesus, by His Spirit, can change this.

God does not grade on a curve. Two good deeds do not make up for one bad one. Any way we slice it, there is nothing we can do to make up for not meeting God’s standard of perfection. Let us remind ourselves of that fact daily, that we might continually believe in the gospel. Only the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us by faith alone, fulfills the Lord’s standard and guarantees us eternal life.

From Ligonier’s January 2012 Tabletalk Magazine

The Convicting Spirit

Harry — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:38:09 +0000

Thou blessed Spirit, Author of all grace, and comfort,
Come, work repentance in my soul;
Represent sin to me in its odious colors that I may hate it; Melt my heart by the majesty and mercy of God; Show me my ruined self and the help there is in him; Teach me to behold my creator,

his ability to save,
his arms outstretched,
his heart big for me.

May I confide in his power and love,
commit my soul to him without reserve,
bear his linage, observe his laws, pursue his service, and be through time and eternitv,
a monument to the efficacy of his grace, a trophy of his victory.

Make me willing to be saved in his way,
perceiving nothing in myself, but all in Jesus:

Help me not only to receive him but
to walk in him,
depend upon him,
commune with him,
be conformed to him,
follow him,
imperfect, but still pressing forward,
not complaining of labor, but valuing rest,
not murmuring under trials, but thankful, for my state.

Give me that faith which is the means of salvation,
and the principle and medium of all godliness;

May I be saved by grace through faith,
live by faith,
feel the joy of faith,
do the work of faith.

Perceiving nothing in myself, may I find in Christ wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption.

From “The Valley of Vision, A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions”

The Discipline of Learning by Donald S. Whitney

Harry — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 19:02:18 +0000

The Christian life begins with learning – learning the gospel. No one is made right with a God about whom he knows nothing. No one is made right with God unless he learns about Him and His message to the world, a message of good news called the gospel. To know God, people must learn that there is a God (Heb. 11:6), that they have broken His law, and that they need to be reconciled to Him. They must learn that God’s Son, Jesus, came to accomplish that reconciliation and that He did so by means of His sinless life and His death on the cross as a substitute for sinners. They must learn of His bodily resurrection and their need to repent of their sins and to believe in Jesus and what He has done. Apart from people learning these things, “How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?” (Rom.10:14).

Intentional learning is implied in Jesus’ offer in Luke 9:23: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” So from the very start of discipleship, to follow Jesus implied learning from Him, for as did Peter, John, and the others, anyone would certainly learn from Jesus if they would follow Him. But Jesus is even more specific about learning from Him in Matthew 11:29: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” To accept the yoke of a disciple of Jesus means to commit to a lifetime of learning about Jesus and from Jesus.

To emphasize learning as essential to following Jesus is not advocacy for egghead Christianity. Like Jesus, we want both a heart for God and a head for God. Remember that the Great Commandment emphasizes loving God both with all the heart and with all the mind, as well as with all one’s soul and strength (Mark 12:29-30). As R.C. Sproul once wrote, “Burning hearts are not nourished by empty heads.” God’s truth — which must be learned — is the fuel for the spiritual fire that flames in the Christian heart.

LIFELONG LEARNING
The Christian life not only begins with learning, it proceeds through a process of lifelong learning. This includes deeper discoveries of intimacy with God, an ever-growing grasp of the Bible and its doctrines, a greater awareness of our sin, an increased knowledge of the person and work of Christ, further implications of what it means to follow Him, and more. A mature understanding of these things does not come quickly or without effort. Simply put, it is impossible to grow into a Christlikeness one knows nothing about. By the Spirit’s power, we must learn what Christlikeness means and how Jesus wants us to follow Him. We learn this through the Bible, of course, but it involves learning nonetheless.

Those whom the Bible considers wise and intelligent understand this. According to Scripture, “The wise lay up knowledge” and “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge” (Prov. 10:14; 18:15). So the primary measurement of wisdom and intelligence is not your IQ or GPA but whether you pursue knowledge, that is, whether you discipline yourself to continue learning the things of God throughout your life.

INTENTIONAL LEARNING
A hunger to learn the Word of God, the ways of God, and the will of God expresses a hunger for God Himself. Those who love God long to be taught about Him and from Him. That doesn’t mean all Christians are to manifest an affinity for learning exactly the same things and in identical ways. But it is true that apathy toward learning the things of God is a mark of those who do not know God.
We are blessed to live in a time when the means of and opportunities for expressing a love for God through learning greatly exceed our ability to take advantage of them. But all these profit little if a person doesn’t pursue them. This is why learning must always be a discipline, for a person can be surrounded by wisdom and knowledge yet live without their riches if he or she does not possess the discipline to learn them.

Thus, learning is indeed a gospel-driven spiritual discipline; those who are not exerting themselves to learn the things of God will gain spiritual and biblical knowledge only by accident or mere convenience. By contrast, intentional learners will seek to learn the things of God and will do so individually as well as with the church, disciplining themselves to learn from those who are gifted by God and recognized by the church as teachers.

Article is from November 2011 Tabletalk Magazine
Dr. Donald S. Whitney is senior associate dean of the school of theology and professor of biblical spirituality at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

He is also founder and president of the Center for Biblical Spirituality

Seeing God Face to Face from Tabletalk Magazine

Harry — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 14:01:46 +0000

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” - Matthew 5:8

On Friday we saw that the connection of the mercy we receive with the mercy we show to others can be a scary prospect indeed apart from the mediation of Christ. If we were to consider the potential of Scripture to strike us with fear more fully, however, we would doubtless include the sixth beatitude as a frightening passage as well. Jesus promises that the “pure in heart” will “see God,” but who among us is pure in heart?

Again, our only confidence is in Christ, who has sanctified His people by His blood (1 Cor. 6:11). He has set us apart definitively as holy and pure, and we prove this status by striving after personal holiness until in glory we are perfected and freed from all sin. This purity is guaranteed by the effectual work of our Savior, and so we who are in Christ Jesus know that we will one day experience the Beatific Vision — we know that we will one day see God as He is.

In Exodus 33:20, the Lord tells us that no man can see His face and live, but this is not due to God making His image-bearers inherently unable to bear His presence. Before the fall, humanity experienced intimate, face-to-face communion with the Creator when He walked with us in the cool of the day (Gen. 3:8). But this fellowship was lost when we fell into sin. The barrier that keeps us from seeing the Lord now is our fallen character. Once this fallenness is removed, there is no reason why we would not be able to gaze on God’s incomparable beauty.

This, indeed, is the Lord’s greatest promise to us, that we will be able to gaze upon Him, the most beautiful, awe-inspiring, worthy, holy, loving being that ever was, is, and will be. We will, as 1 John 3:1–3 tells us, see Him as He is. The Apostle is making reference to Christ: not the human nature of Christ alone but also the divine nature that is perfectly united with humanity in the person of our Savior. And to see the divine nature of the Son of God also means that we will see the other persons of the Trinity as well, for the Son dwells in the Father and the Father in the Son, just as the Holy Spirit mutually indwells the Father and the Son (John 10:37–38). What seeing God face to face means precisely is not for us to know today, but we do know that seeing Him will fully satisfy our souls.

Coram Deo

The greatest glory of heaven is not that we will be free of pain, as wonderful as that will be. Instead, the ability to enjoy direct, face-to-face communion with God and see that for which our souls were created will be the highest joy we can imagine. We can scarcely contemplate the wonder of that day, but the beauty of Christ should make us long for it with the deepest longings of our souls and pursue the purity of heart that leads to this vision.

Article is from November 2011 Tabletalk Magazine

That the Scriptures Might Be Fulfilled – John Piper

Harry — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:26:49 +0000

The glory of Jesus Christ shines more clearly when we see Him in His proper relation to the Old Testament. He has a magnificent relation to all that was written. It is not surprising that this is the case, because He is called the Word of God incarnate (John 1:14). Would not the Word of God incarnate be the sum and consummation of the Word of God written? Consider these summary statements and the texts that support them.

1. ALL THE SCRIPTURES BEAR WITNESS TO CHRIST.

Moses wrote about Christ (John 5:39, 46).

2. ALL THE SCRIPTURES ARE ABOUT JESUS CHRIST, EVEN WHERE THERE IS NO EXPLICIT PREDICTION.

That is, there is a fullness of implication in all Scripture that points to Christ and is satisfied only when He has come and done His work. Graeme Goldsworthy explains: “The meaning of all the Scriptures is unlocked by the death and resurrection of Jesus” (see Luke 24:27).

3. JESUS CAME TO FULFILL ALL THAT WAS WRITTEN IN THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS.

All of it was pointing to Him even where it was not explicitly prophetic. He accomplished what the law required (Matt. 5:17-18).

4. ALL THE PROMISES OF GOD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT ARE FULFILLED IN JESUS CHRIST.

That is, when you have Christ, sooner or later you will have both Christ Himself and all that God promised through Christ (2 Cor. 1:20).

5. THE LAW WAS KEPT PERFECTLY BY CHRIST.

And all its penalties against God’s sinful people were poured out on Christ. Therefore, the Law is manifestly not the path to righteousness, Christ is. The ultimate goal of the Law is that we would look to Christ, not law-keeping, for our righteousness (Rom. 10:4).

Therefore with the coming of Christ virtually everything has changed:

1. THE BLOOD SACRIFICES CEASED BECAUSE CHRIST FULFILLED ALL THAT THEY WERE POINTING TOWARD.

He was the final, unrepeatable sacrifice for sins. Hebrews 9:12: “He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.”

2. THE PRIESTHOOD THAT STOOD BETWEEN WORSHIPPER AND GOD HAS CEASED.

Hebrews 7:23-24: “The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever.”

3. THE PHYSICAL TEMPLE HAS CEASED TO BE THE GEOGRAPHIC CENTER OF WORSHIP.

Now Christ Himself is the center of worship. He is the “place,” the “tent,” and the “temple” where we meet God. Therefore, Christianity has no geographic center, no Mecca, no Jerusalem. John 4:21-23: “Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father…. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”‘ John 2:19-21: “‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ … He was speaking about the temple of his body.” Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”

4. THE FOOD LAWS THAT SET ISRAEL APART FROM THE NATIONS HAVE BEEN FULFILLED AND ENDED IN CHRIST.

Mark 7:18-19: “[Jesus] said to them, ‘Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him… (Thus he declared all foods clean).”

5. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CIVIL LAW ON THE BASIS OF AN ETHNICALLY ROOTED PEOPLE, WHO ARE RULED DIRECTLY BY GOD, HAS CEASED.

The people of God are no longer a unified political body, an ethnic group, or a nation-state, but are exiles and sojourners among all ethnic groups and all states. Therefore, God’s will for states is not taken directly from the Old Testament theocratic order, but should now be reestablished from place to place and from time to time by means that correspond to God’s sovereign rule over all peoples, and that correspond to the fact that genuine obedience, rooted as it is in faith in Christ, cannot be coerced by law.
The state is therefore grounded in God, but not expressive of God’s immediate rule. Romans 13:1: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” John 18:36: “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting.”

Let us worship the wonder of Christ, who unleashed these massive changes in the world. +

Article is from Ocotber 2011 Tabletalk Magazine
Dr. John Piper is pastor for preaching and vision at Bethlehem Baptist church in Minneapolis, and he is the author of more than thirty books, Including A Hunger for God: Desiring God through Fasting and Prayer

Oswald Chambers on Rivers of Living Water

Harry — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:55:05 +0000

Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ ” John 7:38

A river touches places of which its source knows nothing, and Jesus says if we have received of His fulness, however small the visible measure of our lives, out of us will flow the rivers that will bless to the uttermost parts of the earth. We have nothing to do with the outflow—“This is the work of God that ye believe.…” God rarely allows a soul to see how great a blessing he is.

A river is victoriously persistent, it overcomes all barriers. For a while it goes steadily on its course, then it comes to an obstacle and for a while it is baulked, but it soon makes a pathway round the obstacle. Or a river will drop out of sight for miles, and presently emerge again broader and grander than ever. You can see God using some lives, but into your life an obstacle has come and you do not seem to be of any use. Keep paying attention to the Source, and God will either take you round the obstacle or remove it. The river of the Spirit of God overcomes all obstacles. Never get your eyes on the obstacle or on the difficulty. The obstacle is a matter of indifference to the river which will flow steadily through you if you remember to keep right at the Source. Never allow anything to come between yourself and Jesus Christ, no emotion, or experience; nothing must keep you from the one great sovereign Source.

Think of the healing and far-flung rivers nursing themselves in our souls! God has been opening up marvellous truths to our minds, and every point He has opened up is an indication of the wider power of the river He will flow through us. If you believe in Jesus, you will find that God has nourished in you mighty torrents of blessing for others.

Chambers, O. (1993). My utmost for his highest : Selections for the year. Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers.

Don Carson on Peter 1:20

Harry — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:20:06 +0000

original post found on the The Gospel Coalition Blog

So does Peter have a bad hermeneutic? Is his reading of the Old Testament simply crazy? Answer: Some skeptical scholars argue precisely along those lines. They say the New Testament preachers and authors regularly ripped Old Testament texts out of their respective contexts in order to justify the Christian position. This skeptical stance, in my view, is justified only if we concede that the only way the Old Testament is allowed to point forward is in explicit verbal predictions. But that is clearly not so. I have spent much of my adult life working through the way the New Testament quotes the Old, and the longer I ponder these texts, the more I begin to see how they “work,” how rich and beautiful are the ways in which God ordained that his great plan of redemption would be prefigured in an extraordinarily rich, complex, and intertwined array of promises, types, trajectories, histories, institutions and persons, working together to point forward to Jesus and his gospel (see Luke 24:26-27, 45-48; John 5:46).

You Asked: Did the Apostle Peter Have a Bad Hermeneutic?

We’re continuing our new feature, “You Asked,” where readers send us theological, biblical, and practical ministry questions that we pass along to The Gospel Coalition’s Council members and other friends for an answer we can share in this space. If you’d like to ask a question, send it to ask@thegospelcoalition.org along with your full name, city, and state.

We pose today’s question to D. A. Carson, president of The Gospel Coalition and research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He is the author of numerous books on New Testament studies, theological issues, pastoral concerns, and more. The volume he edited with G. K. Beale, Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, deals directly with today’s question.

Fletcher L. from Louisville, Kentucky, writes:

I’m reading through Acts this month. In Acts 1:20, Peter’s talking about Judas and quotes Psalm 69, “May his place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in it.” But Psalm 69 doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Judas. In fact, that psalm seems somewhat anti-gospel. It’s all about David wanting God to smite his enemies, but Jesus said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they’re doing.” Did Peter have a bad hermeneutic? If someone tried to quote a psalm like this without apostolic authority, would you call them crazy?

Carson answers:

Good question. In fact, you seem to have asked three questions, which we can take in turn:

Q 1: Doesn’t Psalm 69 sound anti-gospel, with its rhetoric of retaliation? Answer: I suspect this casts the matter too antithetically: gospel versus anti-gospel. After all, the same Jesus who cries “Father, forgive them” also pronounces blistering denunciations on assorted spiritual hypocrites (e.g., Matt. 23), and the ultimate retaliation at the end is not glossed over in the New Testament (e.g., Rev. 19). The Old Testament, which includes many passages like Psalm 69 that ask God for retaliatory justice, also includes many affirmations of God’s enduring and pursuing love (e.g., Hosea). It makes little sense to set one retaliatory passage from the Old Testament over against a forgiveness passage from the New and pronounce it anti-gospel. The gospel announces the dawning of the kingdom, the coming of the king, especially focusing on his cross and resurrection, to redeem a fallen and rebellious people to God—but the entailment of this news is catastrophic judgment on those who spurn him. All of this is bound up in the gospel: the gospel is not mere happy sentimentality that rejects any judgment, but the spectacular news of what God has done in Christ, with all its comprehensive entailments in both blessing and judgment to the glory of God and for the good of his redeemed people. To put this matter in the broadest Christian categories, ultimately people will find forgiveness and reconciliation to God in the cross, “where wrath and mercy meet,” or they will face unrestrained judgment and face the wrath of God unprotected by Christ.

Q 2: Doesn’t Acts 1:20 rip Psalm 69:25 out of its context, since the psalm makes no mention of Judas Iscariot, and the writer does not appear to have him in view? Answer: Psalm 69 is often called an “individual lament.” In such laments, the psalmist depicts his anguish and suffering, usually caused by horrible circumstances and cruel oppressors. He asks God for grace, strength, faithfulness, and triumph, beseeching God to bring down judgment on the wicked who are trying to destroy him. This, as we have seen under the first question, is not antithetical to one of the major strands of the Bible. But there is more: Psalm 69, the superscription tells us, is a psalm of David. One of the things that Bible readers must come to grips with is “Davidic typology.” This means that in the Old Testament’s progressive description of and comments about David, a trajectory is created, a Davidic trajectory.

To unpack how this Davidic trajectory works would require a long essay, but the basic idea is simple enough. Part of our problem in understanding such trajectories lies in our common assumption that Old Testament predictive prophecies must be simple verbal predictions, while their fulfillments are in the events they predict. Sure enough, there are quite a few prophecies of that sort. But there are far more predictive prophecies that do not depend so much on explicit verbal predictions as on trajectories, commonly called typologies. For example, the institution of the Passover, repeated year after year, annually calls to mind God’s stipulation of a slaughtered lamb, its blood sprinkled on the doorposts and lintel so that the angel of destruction will “pass over” the protected house. There is no Old Testament passage that clearly stipulates that the ultimate passover lamb will be the Messiah. Nevertheless, the repeated rite constitutes a trajectory of expectation, until the apostle Paul finally declares that Christ himself is our Passover lamb, sacrificed for us (1 Cor. 5:7).

So with David. God himself establishes the Davidic dynasty (2 Sam. 7). That means we keep looking for a king in David’s line to fulfill God’s dynastic promises, a new David. Almost three centuries after the Davidic dynasty has been established, Isaiah tells his hearers and readers that this scion of David for whom they are waiting, whose kingdom will know no end, is also the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace (Is. 9). Two centuries later, God, speaking through Ezekiel, promises that he himself will be the Shepherd of his people—in particular, he will send his servant “David” to shepherd them (Ez. 34:23). Passages such as these (and there are many of them) establish what I have called a Davidic trajectory—a trajectory of this theme of David that points unerringly ahead to anticipate the arrival of a greater David, “great David’s greater son” (as the hymn writer puts it).

These predictive structures are there in the Old Testament text itself. The effect is to make us ponder what elements in the life of the historical David become part of this anticipatory trajectory. Some of those events are bound up with the historical David’s suffering. In other words, if David himself points forward along the Davidic trajectory to the ultimate “David,” then crucial events such as David’s unjust suffering also point forward to the unjust suffering of the ultimate “David.”

In this way Psalm 69 plays its part. Just as there are servant songs in Isaiah that point forward to the ultimate suffering servant, so there are Davidic psalms that point forward to the ultimate suffering David. That is why Psalm 69 is repeatedly quoted as being ultimately fulfilled in the sufferings of Jesus (e.g., Matt. 27:34; Mark 15:23; John 2:17; 15:25;19:28-30; Rom. 15:23). Once we see that this is the way Christians commonly read Psalm 69—that is, along this Davidic trajectory—the application of Psalm 69:25 to Judas in Acts 1:20 does not seem far away: As the experience of suffering and betrayal belonged to the historical David while pointing forward to the experience of suffering and betrayal of the ultimate David, so the betrayers of the historical David are finally fulfilled in the betrayer, Judas Iscariot, of the ultimate David, Jesus himself. That seems to be the way Peter in Acts 1 is understanding Psalm 69:25.

Q 3: So does Peter have a bad hermeneutic? Is his reading of the Old Testament simply crazy? Answer: Some skeptical scholars argue precisely along those lines. They say the New Testament preachers and authors regularly ripped Old Testament texts out of their respective contexts in order to justify the Christian position. This skeptical stance, in my view, is justified only if we concede that the only way the Old Testament is allowed to point forward is in explicit verbal predictions. But that is clearly not so. I have spent much of my adult life working through the way the New Testament quotes the Old, and the longer I ponder these texts, the more I begin to see how they “work,” how rich and beautiful are the ways in which God ordained that his great plan of redemption would be prefigured in an extraordinarily rich, complex, and intertwined array of promises, types, trajectories, histories, institutions and persons, working together to point forward to Jesus and his gospel (see Luke 24:26-27, 45-48; John 5:46). Many Christians have studied these matters in recent years, and some of their work is brought together in one fat volume I edited with G. K. Beale, Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), including some technical comments that further explain how Psalm 69:25 is used by Peter in Acts 1 (see p. 530 of the Commentary).