Apologies, but here’s an article that’s worth reading

I’ve been pretty busy lately, and quite worn-out at the moment to polish up the next entry for the series. So I offer you this article as an apology.

Prayerlessness is Unbelief

I want to try to make the case for adding Kevin DeYoung’s blog to your RSS feed (or list of  bookmarks), but I can barely string together my thoughts, let alone write grammatically comprehensible sentences at the moment. So in no particular order – he has a nice to read writing style, he is very insightful, offers a lot of biblical wisdom in many relevant areas, and is a great model of what it means to teach and exhort and encourage and rebuke. If none of that convinces you, just add him for a week and decide for yourself.

Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment

I’ll pause briefly in my series to post this poem. It’s a beautiful and clear portrait of the gospel.

“Mercy triumphs over Judgment”
Glory in this truth revealed!
Love Incarnate stood the torment;
Adam’s punishment repealed!

“Mercy triumphs over Judgment”
Hope for mankind, once secured.
He who knew no sinful nature,
Wrath for sinners full endured.

O the range of mankind’s offense!
Gross his sins, and sentence sure;
Holiness required the verdict-
Death forever; justice pure.

Yet a Perfect Love responded,
Purposing an ancient plan,
Fully meeting wrath’s requirement,
While compassion off’ring man.

There from on the Mercy Seat, the
Son of Righteousness arose;
Cursed ‘came He whose Name is Holy;
On Him fell our rightful blows.

“Mercy triumphs over Judgment”
Mankind’s sentence now appealed;
From the holy God offended,
Righteousness has been revealed!

Glory to the Justifier!
Praise His great and gracious plan;
Bless the holy love of God,
Who gave His Son to ransom Man!

Kevin Hartnett, Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment (1998)

 

Hell is not a human choice

In my previous post, I stated: No one goes to hell willingly. They are thrown into the lake of fire. This statement I think contradicts the prevailing sentiment of the day, which states that “All God does in the end with people is give them what they most want.” Or, everyone who goes to hell chooses to do so.

Today’s blog post will be one where I redirect you to this article: How Willingly Do People Go to Hell?

For those without the patience to read through the article, I offer you this excerpt:

…when a person chooses against God and, therefore, de facto chooses hell—or when he jokes about preferring hell with his friends over heaven with boring religious people—he does not know what he is doing. What he rejects is not the real heaven (nobody will be boring in heaven), and what he “wants” is not the real hell, but the tolerable hell of his imagination…

…What sinners want is not hell but sin. That hell is the inevitable consequence of unforgiven sin does not make the consequence desirable. It is not what people want—certainly not what they “most want.” Wanting sin is no more equal to wanting hell than wanting chocolate is equal to wanting obesity. Or wanting cigarettes is equal to wanting cancer…

Lastly, I wish to point out that, as far as Jesus is concerned, hell is not a point of intellectual debate, but it is a reality we must tremble before. We tremble because the Bible is explicit that hell is not a human choice. Sin is the unwilling choice we make, of which hell is the natural consequence. But the Bible is also explicit that God makes a conscious choice with regard to hell, not as some sadistic dictator, but as a loving king. The choice he made was this: to send his Son to take our place that we may escape the judgment to come. And by choosing to do so, we are given a real choice in life – Christ.

Careless words cloud serious truths

A good reason why Christians ought to guard their speech carefully, especially when it comes to cussing is that cussing trivialises certain realities.

Take ‘damn’ for instance. If you think about it, to damn someone literally means to send someone to hell. There are two issues with this. By your careless language, you trivialise the fact that damnation is a serious consequence of sin, and to hear the word as a Christian can only be accompanied with trembling joy that you have escaped the wrath to come. If you frequently use such language, will you not become insensitive over time to such poignant truths?  The second issue is that you dispossess the word of its power to shock the hearer. The person who has heard friends playfully cuss will not easily receive the warning of God that real condemnation hangs over the head of every unrepentant sinner. How can he when every time he has heard the word, he has heard it in a non-personal, non-serious context? Don’t compound his situation by using the word yourself.

The same goes for ‘hell’. Hell is a horrible reality we must contend with. It is final judgment for those who rebel against God. No one goes to hell willingly. They are thrown into the lake of fire. We must not trivialise hell by using it as a cuss word. It is a word that ought to be spoken with solemness, with grief, with much pleading, and accompanied by the merciful news of the cross of Christ. If we carelessly toss the word around, how can anyone take the reality behind the word seriously?

Watch your tongue the next time you want to express exasperation. Your words can be like poison, clouding further the spiritual truths of God, Christ, salvation and judgment, from both yourself and those who hear you.

The true treasure of the church

“The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of God.” – Luther, Thesis 62

Luther, who sparked off the Reformation when he nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517, was highly indignant at the Roman Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences. The warped theology behind these indulgences was that they were some form of treasure to be purchased and stored in one’s treasury of merit. This treasury of merit was to appease the anger of a righteous God and thus escape his judgment. But the problem was many were left uncertain and fearful of whether they had enough treasure to ‘buy off’ God.

Against this, Luther proclaimed justification by faith by grace alone. Man did not, and could not, earn sufficient treasure to appease the wrath of God and escape the judgment to come. The only treasure of enough value to do so cannot be earned or deserved. It is given to the undeserving. And the Church is the means by which God dispenses this grace of salvation to everyone. The treasure of the Church lies not in the grandeur of the building, the assets of the people, the skill and intellect of the preacher, the warmness of the community or the richness of its heritage, but solely consists of the grand, rich, wise, loving and timeless gospel of Jesus Christ, who came to us full of glory and grace and truth.

This is a treasure that does not diminish and cannot be willfully taken. It is given to us in ever increasing measure by God. The church does not need to hoard and safeguard this treasure, but it must prize this treasure, and this treasure is best prized when it is given to those who do not have it.

Trees don’t have branches simply because they are trees

Mark 4:30-32
And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

A common interpretation of this parable is that the kingdom starts small but becomes the biggest reality. While I think there’s some validity to this interpretation, I think it is rather more valid for the parable that goes before this.

Instead, because Jesus seems to emphasise the difference in both stature and size of the mustard seed and the tree it grows into, I am led to interpret this parable from a redemptive-historical point of view (I’m pretty sure there’s a nice phrase for this). The mustard seed of which he talks about is the smallest of all seeds on earth, and likewise, Jesus who became man, became the lowliest of all men on earth, taking the very nature of a servant. He came to serve all men, effectively placing himself at the bottom of the worldly hierarchy of man. Yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes the largest of trees. Likewise Jesus died, and by his death the kingdom of God would established. His death bought a people into his kingdom. His death sounded the death knell of the kingdom of Satan, whose power was bound up in the power of death.

And this tree which becomes larger than all the garden plants, puts out large branches SO THAT the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. The branches are not there simply because it’s a tree. The branches are also there for the birds to find a place to rest. Who are the birds of the air? My educated guess on this would be that this refers to all believers, although I’ve also heard that it refers to the Gentiles.

This certainly helps to bring out some of the nuance behind Jesus’ statement in John 12:23-24:

Now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks. So these came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

By the death of the king, the kingdom grows, that all men may find rest in Christ, and that Christ might be glorified.

Our work is not first and decisive

Another blog I follow is the Desiring God blog. There are different contributors to the blog, and it’s a pleasure to read all of them. Piper’s post today caught my attention, not just because of its title, “One of the Most Important Principles in Reading the Bible”, but because it’s particularly relevant to my study of the gospel of Mark at church with a bunch of other guys.

As Piper frames the issue:

Sometimes readers of the Bible see the conditions that God lays down for his blessing and they conclude from these conditions that our action is first and decisive, then God responds to bless us. That is not right.

If you’ve ever read the gospels, they are certainly full of commands and conditional promises, and it’s easy to misconstrue them as Jesus’ main point. But we fail to notice that God fulfills these conditions himself in Christ. Piper concludes:

This is one of the most basic things people need to see about the Bible. It is full of conditions we must meet for God’s blessings. But God does not leave us to meet them on our own. The first and decisive work before and in our willing is God’s prior grace. Without this insight, hundreds of conditional statements in the Bible will lead us astray.

Let this be the key to all Biblical conditions and commands: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12-13). Yes, we work. But our work is not first or decisive. God’s is. “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

I recommend you read the whole post here.

Some musical musings

What sort of songs ought to characterise a healthy church?

I would like to argue that if a healthy church is characterised by a proper understanding of the gospel and its outworkings, then our songs ought to reflect such a balance of theology. As the proclamation of the gospel is central to repentance and faith, so we should often sing about the gospel, and how in it the fullness of God is revealed in Christ in our hearts by the Spirit. And as the outworkings of the gospel, as the name implies, works out from the gospel message itself, so our singing should also be one of response to the implications of the gospel for our lives.

But where should the balance between these two things be?

I think to be safe, we ought to sing about the message of the gospel more frequently than sing our response. I argue for this because we are humanly prone to falling into a works-based righteousness, which is no righteousness at all. Given our propensity for such legalism, if we sing enough about our response to the gospel, and if it is true that our theology is very much informed by what we sing, then soon enough we will confuse the response for the message. The message will no longer precede the response, as is the biblical pattern, but the response becomes all in all.

Take “This is my desire”, “You Alone Are Worthy of My Praise”, “Hear These Praises” or “Draw Me Close”. All very valid songs. But I would only use one per setlist. Why? Well, if you look at them lyrically, they are all a response to some revelation. Problem is if you don’t actually reveal something, then singing these songs are like mouthing empty platitudes. You generally can’t walk up to some random stranger on the street and say “I love you” with any degree of honesty. Going back to the original issue, if all you ever sang was some variant of “You Alone Are Worthy of My Praise”, you would quickly forget why exactly. And then soon after, the way you relate to God becomes very much grounded in the act of singing that you’ll respond in a certain way to God. And if we are consistent people, we will then try to respond in the way we’ve just sung about. And then the only relationship we have with God is one of acting in the way we’ve just sung about, instead of one grounded on the objective truth of Christ crucified. We are turned inward onto the way we act.

Speaking of these “I Worship You” songs, I’ve always found an oddity about them. Guys who have dated before at a very young age might identify with this, although this occurrence might persist even with age. There’s this strange thing about girls always wanting to hear their boyfriends say the magic words – “I love you”. Namely, doesn’t it get tiresomely formulaic after a while? I’ve always stressed that there must exist some exponential diminishing return with each use of the phrase. The reason for this is simply that, for humans, love isn’t an end in itself. It’s always some response to some truth or work. And unless there is some telepathic bond between boy and girl, I would think women appreciate such revelations of love infinitely more when some good reason is attached to them and they are accompanied by appropriate acts. Moreover, more often than not, the phrase acts as a cover up for laziness on the guy’s end to carefully consider why he actually loves her and how he should demonstrate it. Likewise, perhaps it’s time to abandon the phrase “I worship you” and actually get on with proper worshiping, proclaiming the truth of God and responding with appropriate deeds.

Leadership vacuums and mega-conferences

One of the blogs I read on a consistent basis is written by a Christian called Doug Wilson. I don’t agree with everything he says, but his rhetoric is pretty sharp and witty and many of his posts do prompt you to think and, occasionally, laugh at the idiocies and fallacies we humans are capable of. Anyways, here’s something that caught my attention today. In his post, he talks about the kinds of troubles that arise in churches and families. One of the two troubles he points out is as follows:

The second kind of trouble is caused because of weakness (or perceived weakness) on the part of the leadership. Challenges, objections, querulous inquiries, and accusations are all made, and they are made simply because those making them think they can get away with it. No other reason is necessary. Nature abhors a vacuum, and always seeks to fill it. Human nature abhors a leadership vacuum (or perceived leadership vacuum) and will seek to fill it.

He then cleverly illustrates this trouble with a marriage example:

A husband and wife go to a family conference in which Husbandly Perfection is extolled and taught with a high-gloss finish put on it, and the husband in question is an ordinary schmoe with a job, three kids and very discontented wife, and so the drive home from this conference is a cold one, with her glaring at him most of the way. When the thing blows up later, it is not because he is a terrible husband. It is because she knows he will put up with it. She talks to him this way because she can. When this is happening, the particular result sought is not really the issue, but rather a demonstration of who really gets to set the agenda around here.

And a church example:

In a church, let us say that the complaints are about _________________ (fill in the blank with “the liturgy,” “the music,” “the preaching,” or “other”). And remember that we are not in category one discussed earlier, where the liturgy is Godforsaken, the music an offense to the heavenly angels and the preaching the kind that could not find its way out of a paper bag. Suppose the liturgy is okay, the music okay, and the preaching okay. It turns out that the average church is not capable of being above average. But the average church is capable of being okay.

When the criticisms are leveled, the point is not whether there is room for an average church to grow, mature, and improve. Of course there is always room for that, and a good place to start is by not subsidizing criticisms that place the average church on an impossible treadmill. The pastor doesn’t preach like John Piper. So? The congregational singing does not sound like a bunch of Welshmen having a revival in a hall with fine acoustics. Not a problem. The average church can’t compete (and it is not a competition anyway).

And that is the truth, isn’t it? The average church can’t compete with the best ones around, but it’s not a competition! I find one of his conclusions rather striking, and reckon it’s pretty sound wisdom:

The widespread availability of media-savvy Christianity, conference Christianity, talent-cluster Christianity, and so on, is that it has precisely the same effect on the attendees that going to the Husbandly Perfection conference had on that poor, murmuring wife earlier. When people visit a place that is rich in resources, teaching talent, and so on, like your average mega-conference, there are two possible results. One is that it makes the attendee more equipped to be a loyal and faithful parishioner to a faithful but average pastor back home. If that is the case, then have at it. Go to the conferences. But if all it does is set up invidious comparisons, then that person needs to quit going to conferences.

You can read the whole article here. For the record, I don’t know who Girard is myself. But I wouldn’t consider that a major stumbling block in understanding the gist of his post.

The Prodigal and the Proud

I realised I’ve not posted for a long time, and that is probably owing to my compulsion of wanting my posts to be perfect. I don’t want to post something I’ll later regret or wish I could have phrased better. But then I came to the conclusion that a blog isn’t the right medium for perfection; it’s more of a medium for raw thought (which I want to distinguish from raw emotion). I do have quite a number of posts that are sitting in my editing pile and hopefully some of those might now see the light of day.

This evening, I was reading through some poetry by Piper called the Prodigal’s Sister. It’s a retelling of the parable of the prodigal son from the perspective of a sister whose work and words reconcile both brothers to their father. This excerpt comes from the end of this little book of poetry, and is a prayer that responds beautifully to the truths in the parable.

And now, O Christ, let there be light
So we can see the way aright
Between two dismal forms of death,
And with that light, O give us breath
To live again, and bring us back
From pleasures in a foreign shack,
Or from the pride of weary arm,
While working on the Father’s farm.
From demon sloth and pleasures raw,
Or demon toil and pride of law.
The pathway home from either place
Is opened by the word of grace.
O Christ, pursue us till we see
That all of God’s bequests are free.
The ticket that we have to show
Is this: that we are glad to go.