Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Ryken on Prayer and God's Sovereignty

"Imagine for a moment that God is not sovereign in grace, but that salvation ultimately depends on the sinner's own choice. How then should we pray? Do we say, 'Dear Lord, I realize that there may not be much that you can do about this, but if there is, please help my friend somehow to become a Christian'? Of course, no one actually prays this way: the very idea is absurd. But what makes it so absurd is that, deep down, every Christian believes in the sovereignty of God's grace. When we pray for sinners to be converted, therefore, we ask God to do something for them that we know they are utterly incapable of doing for themselves. We ask God to invade their minds, change their hearts, and bend their wills so that they will come to him in faith and repentance. In short, in our intercession we depend on God to save them."

Philip Ryken

What is a True Calvinist?

A Quick Thought...Sacrificing for His Children

The majority of the Book of Job deals with his (and others') reactions to the suffering which he faces. As a result, that tends to be what we focus on when we read Job. I noticed something else today though, something that comes before his suffering.

In the days before tragedy had befallen his family, Job would routinely hold feasts for his children. We are told in Job 1:5, "And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, 'It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.' Thus Job did continually."

Job's concern for the spiritual welfare of his children is certainly commendable. But ultimately I do not think we are meant to consider Job's loving sacrifices merely on their own terms. Rather, ought they not point us to another Father who, concerned for the spiritual well-being of his children, sacrificed for them at the greatest of cost to Himself?

Glory be to the God whose sacrificial love for His children knows no bounds!

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Lewis on Pleasures

"Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility…But aren’t there bad, unlawful pleasures? Certainly there are. But in calling them 'bad pleasures' I take it we are using a kind of shorthand. We mean 'pleasures snatched by unlawful acts.' It is the stealing of the bad apples that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory…I have tried since…to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it.  One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different…Gratitude exclaims, very properly, 'How good of God to give me this.' Adoration says, 'What must be the quality of that Being whose far off and momentary coruscations are like this!' One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun…If this is Hedonism, it is also a somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labor."

C.S. Lewis
Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
(as quoted by John Piper in When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy)

Where Was God?

This week, a few high profile Christians have been in the news for their comments regarding last Friday's tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut. Rightly or wrongly, they have been understood to have said, in essence, "What do we expect when we, as a nation, have escorted God out of our schools?" Friend and fellow Michigan pastor, David Crabb, reminds us that to adopt such a view would be to woefully underestimate who the sovereignty of God.

"In other words, you can’t kick God out of anything. This nation can rage against God, but His sovereign control hasn’t slipped a bit. God isn’t a disappointed grandfather who knows when He’s not welcome, He is an eternal Sovereign who holds the hearts of kings in His hand and wisely rules over all things."

Click here to read David's entire post, and to see why such an understanding of God's sovereignty is so important to maintain.

A Christian View of the Election...and the Four Years That Follow

I've posted the following thoughts before, but given that the election is tomorrow, I felt like I wanted to re-state these truths (with a few very minor adaptations to fit our current context).

Tomorrow is election day in the United States of America. Not only will the presidential election be held, but votes will be cast for and against many other candidates and issues.  As an American, you have a right to express your opinions and vote for the candidates that you feel best represent them. Some would argue that these are not just your rights, but your responsibility.  So go ahead and vote tomorrow.

As you vote though--especially if you're a Christian--I want to remind you of these important facts: Regardless of who is ultimately elected, 

• They serve not just because they got the most votes, but because it is the will of God that they do so (Romans 13:1).
• As such, and in light of their position, they are entitled to our respect (1 Peter 2:17).
• We are to pray, intercede and give thanks for them (1 Timothy 2:1-2).

Ultimately, we need to remember that whoever wins this (or any election), we must not fall into the trap of believing that their election will fix (or ruin) everything. Things are already pretty messed up, and that goes back not to any decision made by a politician, but to Adam’s decision in the Garden of Eden to forsake the will of God (Genesis 3:17-19).

There is One coming though who will set all things right. But He will not come to power on the basis of the electoral college in accordance with the laws of the land. Rather He will come with power that is already His in accordance with the promises of God (Revelation 21:1-5).

Regardless of political trends and election results, may our ultimate prayer tomorrow (and every day) be this: Come, Lord Jesus!

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Scotty Smith on God's Story

"(W)e are made to live in God's Story...for God's glory...with God's joy. It's only within God's Story that our stories find their true meaning and destiny. This is the story that we have in common with God's people of every generation.

"Think about it: though we spend much of life relegating God to bit parts in our little autobiographies of self-fulfillment, God generously 'enfolds' us into His cosmic Story of transforming love! Could any of us possibly want or hope for more out of life?

"We are called into a story that enfolds our own stories in a grander narative--a story that is going somewhere, a story that is taking us with it. There really is a Great Story that goes on forever, in which each chapter gets better than the one before. We dwindle or we grow. Which will you choose?"

Scotty Smith
Restoring Broken Things: What Happens When We Catch a Vision of the New World Jesus is Creating

Meditating on the Glory and Love of Christ

Today I came across this helpful reminder from John Owen in The Glory of Christ:

I would urge you to prepare your minds continually for heavenly things by meditating seriously on the glory of the love of Christ.  This cannot be done if the mind is always full of earthly thoughts.  Do not be satisfied with general thoughts of the love of Christ but think of it in a more detailed way.

1. Consider whose love it is: the love of the Son of God who is also the Son of Man. As he is unique, so his love must be unique. 
2. Think of the wisdom, goodness and grace shown in the eternal acts of his divine nature and of the pity an love of his human nature in all that he did and suffered for us (see Ephesians 3:19; Hebrews 2:14, 15; Revelation 1:5). 
3. We deserved hatred, but, "in this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (John 4:10). 
4. What power this love has in its effect on our lives, enabling us to bear fruit to his glory.

God is Good...All the Time!

Last night as I was going home from work, my car wouldn’t start. At first it acted like it was trying to start. Then nothing. As unfortunate as this may be, I guess I shouldn’t be shocked. Both of our vehicles have over 180,000 miles on them, and while we do enjoy the lack of a car payment, it does sometimes seem as though we ought to earn frequent flier miles at the repair shop. And it’s never fun nor convenient to have a car in the shop.

Strike one.

Well, I called the shop that we frequent and told them I was going to have our vehicle towed over. They told me Tuesday was completely full, and that while they would try to squeeze it in, it would most likely be Wednesday before they even got to look at it.

Strike two.

I figured there was no sense in waiting an indefinite period of time after work for a tow truck to show up when I could just have them come get it the next morning when I was already going to be there anyway. So this morning my wfe gave me a ride to work. As she dropped me off she suggested, “Go see if it starts.” I reluctantly pulled out my keys, stuck them in the ignition, and what do you know? It started right up. No problem.

My response: God is good!

If they had been able to fit me in last night, I would have wasted time and money waiting for the tow truck and having the shop look at and fix my vehicle. Of course, I realize there is the very real possibility (probability?) that it won’t start later today. And if that’s the case, then you know what? God is still good.

I say this because God’s goodness toward me is not determined by my circumstances. While there will be times when everything seems to be going my way, there will also be times when it seems that all the world is against me. God’s word promises as much. (e.g., John 16:33)

Whether I am up or down though, instead of looking at my circumstances to determine whether God loves me, I need to take to heart the words of Hebrews 12:2, and look “to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." For if he was willing to endure the cross in my place, with all its shame and scorn, its pain and suffering, then I can be sure of his love and his goodness toward me. And so can you. Even when your car doesn’t start.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Sproul on Holiness and the Justice of God

"Was it unjust for God to say to Adam and Eve that they would die when they sinned? Think about it. Was it evil for God to impose the death penalty for all sin? If you say yes, be careful. If you say yes, you are saying it as an expression of the very fallen, sinful nature that exposes you to the death penalty in the first place. If you say yes, you slander the character of God. If you say yes,you do violence to His holiness. If you say yes, you assail the righteous Judge of all the earth. If you say yes, you have never come to grips with what sin is. We must not say yes. We must say no and say it with conviction.

R.C. Sproul
The Holiness of God

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Calvin on the Primacy of God

"For, quite clearly, the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hardly from ourselves: indeed. our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God. Then, by these benefits shed like dew from heaven upon us, we are led as by rivulets to the spring itself. Indeed, our very poverty better discloses the infinitude of benefits reposing in God. The miserable ruin, into which the rebellion of the first man cast us, especially compels us to look upward...Thus, from the feeling of our own ignorance, vanity, poverty, infirmity, and--what is more--depravity and corruption, we recognize that the true light of wisdom, sound virtue, fell abundance of every good, and purity of righteousness rest in the Lord alone."

John Calvin
Institutes of the Christian Religion

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Charnock on the Holiness of God

"It is less injury to Him to deny His being, than to deny the purity of it; the one makes Him no God, the other a deformed, unlovely, and a detestable God. He that saith God is not holy speaks much worse that he that saith there is no God at all."

Stephen Charnock

For Our Good and For His Glory

I'm thinking about preaching a series of sermons on the Exodus and an interesting thing caught my eye today. In Exodus 7:3 God tells Moses that he is going to "multiply signs and wonders in the land of Egypt" so that Pharaoh will be made aware that he should let the nation of Israel go. Pharaoh will not listen, Moses is told, so god declares that he will instead bring his people out of Egypt "by great acts of judgment."

What caught my attention is what comes as a result of this judgment. In 7:5 we read, "The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them."

Did you catch that? God's intention is not just that Israel would be delivered out of bondage, but also that Egypt would know that he is God. I find two things interesting about this.

First of all, God is not just some tribal deity, content to receive the homage from some small group of people. He is the God of all creation, and is rightly jealous for acclaim as such from all peoples. He wants the Egyptians to know his name.

Secondly (and I can never be reminded of this enough), while the Bible is an unfolding drama, I am not the center of the story, God is. God is indeed acting for the benefit of his people (both in Exodus and today), but his ultimate goal is far greater than them. He is concerned that his glory be made manifest in all the earth.

We would never consciously admit that we think God exists to serve us. But functionally, this is the way we often approach him. We often ask questions as to why WE are victims of injustice or how good could possibly come from the bad things that happen TO US. Our finite minds can't conceive how certain circumstances could possibly work our for our good, much less for God's glory.

In the midst of such thoughts and feelings, let us rejoice that this was not the mindset of Jesus. For however much we might feel that we have been treated unfairly, that we have been wronged, no man has ever been treated more unjustly than the man Jesus Christ. And no person has ever experienced bad things quite like the Son of God.

As he died on the cross it made no sense to his followers. And if we had been there, it would have made no sense to us either. But in the midst of God's righteous judgment of OUR sin being levied against HIM, God was indeed working out things in a way that was better than we could possibly have imagined. It was for our good and for his glory.

So let us always be "looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:2)

Wednesdays Words of Wisdom...Edwards on the Glorious Perfections of God

"It seems to be a thing in itself fit and desirable, that the glorious perfections of God should be known, and the operations and expressions of them seen by other beings besides himself...(and) 'tis a thing infinitely good in itself that God's glory should be known by a glorious society of created beings."

Jonathan Edwards
The End for Which God Created the World

Wednesdays Words of Wisdom...Pascal on the Unique Sufficiency of God

"There once was in man a true happiness of which now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present.  But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and imutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself."

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Compete4Christ

Anyone who knows me well knows that I'm a pretty big sports fan.  That being said, as I've mentioned elsewhere, I get a little uncomfortable when outspoken Christian athletes seemingly turn God's word into nothing but decontextualized, triumphalistic platitudes about God's goodness in times of victory.

That's why I was recently heartened to find a new blog produced by Kurt Earl named Compete4Christ. Kurt is one of the football coaches at Lincoln Christian School in Lincoln, Nebraska, and in his words, "Compete4Christ exists to offer athletes, coaches and fans the opportunity to read verse by verse exegetical teaching of the Bible from an athletic perspective. My prayer is that this blog, guided by the power of the Holy Spirit, will help to equip the Elect in redeeming sporting events for God's glory."

We need to realize that if God is truly God, then all of life (including our competition on the athletic field) is subject to his sovereignty. Furthermore, if God is present and active in our victories, then he must be every bit as much so in our defeats. If we only see God's hand at work in our victories, then every time we fail it will call into question God's faithfulness.  But as Kurt pointed out in a recent entry, God is perhaps even more active in our failures.

When you Compete4Christ you begin to see failure as an opportunity for growth rather than a reason to be embarrassed or feel shame. Is God surprised or disappointed when we give our best effort and fall short? In fact, what we often declare failure God probably sees as opportunity.

'More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.' –Romans 5:3-5 

God sees failure as an opportunity for growth, for becoming more like His Son. Remember, our goal in participating in sports is to become more like Jesus Christ, to conform to his image. No amount of failure can deter us from that goal. In fact, as we have seen, failure gives us a chance to obtain the goal. Is that liberating or what?!

The Integrity of God

In Ezekiel 36:36, God says in reference to his prophetic promises to his people, "I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it."

As I thought about this passage, it struck me how intertwined are God's identity, his word, and his actions.  Sometimes I say things and then don't  follow through, or do things that are less than consistent with who I am (at least who I am in Christ).  But with God there is no such disjunction.  There is perfect integrity between who he is, what he says and what he does.  God will never act out of character with himself.  He will never speak rashly nor make a promise and then not follow through.

So it is that we can be confident in his proclamation that as we behold his glory, we are constantly being transformed into his likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18), and we can be sure that this work he has begun will one day be brought unto completion (Phillippians 1:6).  What glorious words of promise!  Oh how I long for that day!

A Privileged Position

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, I am studying through the Book of Ezekiel, and one of the first things that struck me was the frequency with which we find the phrase "know that I am the LORD." Clearly, a key message that God is communicating through the prophet is his identity.

Whenever we see the word "LORD" printed in all caps (as it is in 67 of the 72 times "know that I am the LORD" appears in Ezekiel), that alerts us to the fact that the Hebrew word that is being translated is actually the divine name, YAHWEH. Jews had such respect for the name of God, and so feared misusing it (in violation of the third commandment), that instead of speaking it, they actually said, "adonai," the Hebrew word for "LORD."

So it is, that when we see God so emphasizing throughout Ezekiel his desire that people would "know that I am the LORD," it is more than a job description he is a talking about; it is his very identity. In light of this, it is interesting to note a slightly more specific phrase that appears four times in the Book of Ezekiel: "Know that I am the LORD their God." In each instance where we find this phrase, it is in the context of Ezekiel's prophetic words specifically to the house of Israel.

Make no mistake about it: YAHWEH is no tribal deity; he is God over all creation. Regardless of whether people bow their knee before him, he is God. But what we see here is that he is God of his people in a special way peculiar to their relationship. He is not just the LORD. He is not just the LORD God. He is the LORD, their God, and as such, they are in a position of amazing privilege.

Now we must be careful to realize that this doesn't mean that the people of God were (or are) necessarily better than the other peoples, nor have they have in any way earned this privileged relationship. Throughout the Book of Ezekiel, the prophet chastises the people of God for their sin just as he does the other nations (actually, even more so). Their special standing as God's particular people is a product of nothing but his grace and his steadfast love toward them.

The New Testament picks this idea up in Jesus' teaching that we should pray to God as "Our Father." This is not a prayer for all people, but rather the prayer of a disciple, one who has been conferred the benefits of adoption. May we, as Christians, never fail to exult in the fact that we are in a special relationship with God. And may we always do so humbly, knowing that it is nothing but the work of Christ that has established this relationship for us.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Paige Benton Brown on God's Goodness

"Can God be any less good to me on the average Tuesday morning than he was on that monumental Friday afternoon when he hung on a cross in my place?  The answer is a resounding NO.  God will not be less good to me tomorrow either, because God cannot be less good to me.  His goodness is not the effect of his disposition but the essence of his person -- not an attitude but an attribute."

Paige Benton Brown

(HT: Scott Sauls)

Indeed, God Does Have a Wonderful Plan for Your Life. But...

A couple weeks ago, Trevin Wax posted this picture as part of a blog post which included an excerpt from his book, Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in an Age of Rivals.  In it he pointed out that God's "wonderful plan" for us is not always the same "wonderful plan" we would have for ourselves.  Whereas we would often desire health, wealth and happiness, along with physical and emotional security, what God desires is that we would be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).

Often this occurs through pain and suffering, trials and persecution.  And sometimes it happens that we experience these not just for our benefit, but for the benefit of others.  After all, we are not individually (as we so often functionally suppose) the center of God's world.  Rather he is to be uniquely the center of ours.

As my seminary professor Dr. Jack Collins liked to put, "Don't hear what I'm not saying."  Indeed, we should remember (and be encouraged by!) the fact "that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose," (Romans 8:28, ESV).  But we need to remember that the good toward which all things work is not always an earthly good.  As Wax put it:

"Our lives do not always seem wonderful. But rather than trying to see what wonderful plan God has for giving us our best life now, Christians trust that the picture God is painting will be beautiful, so we look to experiencing our best life later. God has a wonderful plan, and because of his grace, we are part of that plan."

Click here to read his whole post.

We Praise What We Enjoy

Today I read another great post from Jared Wilson. In it he insightfully states that we offer praise to those things which we truly enjoy.

Worship of God is enjoyment of God. We have no problem laughing at something funny, smiling at something pretty, "mmmm"-ing something delicious, humming something catchy, or cheering something exciting in the stadium, but when we get into church on Sunday mornings, we have trouble worshiping because we don't know and enjoy God the same way we know and enjoy jokes, pictures, food, songs, or sports.

Click here to read the whole post.