Can Leviticus Actually Be Good News?

It was said of Willie Mays that his glove was the place where triples went to die. I suppose it could be said that Leviticus is the place where Bible reading plans go to die.

Many a person has begun a Bible reading plan at the start of a new year with high hopes and the best of intentions. Things generally begin well. The stories found in Genesis keep things moving along and the mighty acts of God in Exodus usually keep the reader on track. 

Then something happens. That something is Leviticus. With all of its detail and minutiae regarding ceremonial law, many a reader simply loses interest. What, after all, does all of it have to do with the Gospel?

Against the backdrop of this reality comes a new commentary on Leviticus  by Dr. Jay Sklar from IVP's Tyndale Old Testament Commentary series. Jay is Professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, where I took two semesters of Hebrew from him. As unbelievable as it may seem, each class period could truly be classified as a devotional experience. If a man can turn the study of Hebrew into a devotional experience, he can no doubt show us how the Gospel sings in Leviticus. That, after all, is what it is intended to do. 

He begins by pointing us to a vital, though often overlooked fact: Leviticus can only be properly understood in light of the story that immediately precedes it.

The story immediately before Leviticus is one in which the Lord redeems the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and enters into covenant relationship with them. They are to be his ‘treasured possession’ who are to fulfill a special role: being a ‘kingdom of priests and a holy nation’, and in this way spreading the Lord’s kingdom of justice, mercy, goodness and love in all the earth. What is more, they are to do this with the Lord himself dwelling in their midst in the tent of meeting. If you were an Israelite, all of this would lead to some burning questions: How in the world can the holy and pure King of the universe dwell among his sinful and impure people? How can he live here, in our very midst, without his holiness melting us in our sin and impurity? And how can we live as his people in such a way that we really do extend his holy kingdom throughout the earth?

Leviticus answers these questions.

But that’s not all Leviticus does.

(I)t also casts a vision that takes the Israelites back to the Lord’s intent for humanity from the beginning of the world: to walk in rich fellowship with their covenant King, enjoying his care and blessing, and extending throughout all the earth his kingdom of justice, mercy, kindness, righteousness, holiness and love.

And all the while Jay reminds us, “If what we see in the Old Testament  is an acorn, what we see in Jesus is a magnificent oak. This is especially true for the themes of Leviticus.”

I am very thankful to have this commentary on my bookshelf and I highly recommend that you do the same.

Frozen, Freedom and the Gospel

If you (like me) have a pre-teen daughter, you have perhaps seen the Disney movie Frozen. Almost certainly you have heard your daughter sing the movie's hit song, Let It Go (performed above by Idina Menzel).

Trevin Wax offered some great thoughts on the movie and the song in a post today at his Kingdom People blog. He points out:

Thousands of little girls across the country are singing this song – a manifesto of sorts, a call to cast off restraint, rebel against unrealistic expectations and instead be true to whatever you feel most deeply inside. What’s ironic is that the movie’s storyline goes against the message of this song. When the princess decides to “let it go,” she brings terrible evil into the world. The fallout from her actions is devastating. “No right, no wrong, no rules for me” is the sin that isolates the princess and freezes her kingdom.

He goes on...

 A popular idea in our culture is that there are only two ways to live:

1. Through authenticity, expressed in rebellion against cultural constraints
2. Through an ordered life, expressed in rule-keeping

Neither of these paths are the way to true fulfillment though.Wax concludes,

Christianity teaches explicitly what Frozen only hints at: salvation comes not through self-discovery or self-restraint, but through self-sacrifice.

All across the country, little girls are singing about self-discovery. Let’s make sure that after they see the film, they are given songs about self-sacrifice.

 Read the whole post here.

A Word for Preachers...William Still on Preaching the Whole Word of God

"Beyond the deeper truths of the Gospel -- which, alas, so many do not teach and preach for, I fear, reasons obscure to others but known to themselves -- there is the darker blackcloth to the Good News, namely, the penal and corrective judgements of God, upon which the scintillating diamond of the Gospel shines with a thousand facets. The judgements are also the Word of God; and only he who preaches and teaches the whole Bible, dark and light, rightly dividing the Word of truth, fully proclaims the Word of God. After all, we see a rainbow only on the clouds."

William Still
The Work of the Pastor

ESV Gospel Transformation Bible

I love Bryan Chapell. I love the English Standard Version of the Bible. I love the Christ-centered, gospel-grounded understanding that I've come to have of the overarching narrative of the Scriptures.

For all these reasons and many more--including (but not limited to) the involvement of Dane Ortlund and Scotty Smith--I can't wait to see the ESV Gospel Transformation Bible. Check out the video below.

The Church...In Less Than Three Minutes

(HT: Scott Sauls)

Exciting Conference News!

On October 26th we at Calvary Presbyterian Church will be hosting our conference for the 10th time and we have a number of developments to share:

1) The conference's name is changing. To this point, it has been called the Mid-Michigan Conference on Reformed Theology. Beginning this year it will simply be called the Mid-Michigan Reformation Conference. The name change reflects a number of things. While we are still unquestionably Reformed in our theology, our intention is to have a Gospel-centered conference instead of having a Reformed Theology-centered conference. The teaching will still be from a Reformed perspective, but we hope this change will reflect our realization that we are not saved by having really sound theology, but by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

The reality also is that, perhaps since we have always held the conference on Reformation Weekend, many (most?) of the people we spoke with already referred to it as our "Reformation Conference." Perhaps this was also because of the fact that it's less wordy, which is another benefit of the new name.

2) This year's theme will be "The Glory of Christ" and we will once again have four gifted pastors from our region coming to speak to us. David Crabb of First Baptist Church in Lapeer, Jason Helopoulos of University Reformed Church in East Lansing and Don Galardi of Community EPC in Owosso have already agreed to speak. We are still waiting on confirmation from our fourth speaker and will pass along word as soon as we have it.

3) And the biggest news is...THIS YEAR'S CONFERENCE WILL BE ABSOLUTELY FREE! We will gladly accept donations to help support the conference and enable us to continue to provide it, but we wanted to remove the possible obstacle of cost so that as many people as possible could be a part of this thoroughly enjoyable and edifying experience. 

So make sure you mark October 26th on your calendars now. There will be more information coming out soon. In the meantime, feel free to email me with any questions at Pete@CalvaryFlint.com.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...DeYoung on the Gospel and Holiness

"(T)he gospel aids our pursuit of holiness by telling us the truth about who we are. Certain sins become more difficult when we understand our new position in Christ. If we are heirs to the whole world, why should we envy? If we are God's treasured possession, why be jealous? If God is our Father, why be afraid? If we are dead to sin, why live in it? If we've been raised with Christ, why continue in our old sinful ways? If we are seated in the heavenly places, why act like the devil of hell? If we are loved with an everlasting love, why are we trying to prove our worth to the world? If Christ is all in all, why am I so preoccupied with myself?"

Kevin DeYoung
The Hole in our Holiness: Filling the Gap between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness

Fellowship in the Gospel

For those of you who (like me) are in eastern Michigan and love to fellowship with brothers in Christ as we bask in the glow of the Gospel, let me alert you to what is sure to be a great event May 3rd and 4th. Fellowship in the Gospel is a two day conference hosted by Berean Baptist Church in Livonia, Michigan, and it is dedicated to the idea that the Gospel is the key to preaching and teaching, the key to relationships, and the key to an ongoing life of transformation.

This year's keynote speaker will be Dr. Bryan Chapell of Covenant Theological Seminary. During my time at Covenant, Dr. Chapell did as much as anyone to increase my understanding of and appreciation for the grace of God and the good news of the Gospel.

The schedule includes three plenary messages from Dr. Chapell, as well as three elective sessions. For those interested, there is also a pre-conference workshop by Brian Vickers focusing on Abraham's Sanctification by Faith.

Click here for information regarding registration.

The Importance of Secondary Doctrines

In an age where many are (rightly) emphasizing the centrality of the gospel and uniting around this common focus, it can become all too easy to minimize "non-essentials" to a status of "non-importance." I really appreciated the helpful  corrective friend and fellow-Michigan pastor Jason Helopoulos offered in a guest post at Kevin DeYoung's blog today. His post included the following quote from 19th century Scottish Presbyterian Thomas Witherow:

Let a man once persuade himself that importance attaches only to what he is pleased to call essentials, whatever their number, and he will, no doubt, shorten his creed and cut away the foundation of many controversies; but he will practically set aside all except a very small part of the Scriptures. If such a principle does not mutilate the Bible, it stigmatizes much of it as trivial. Revelation is all gold for preciousness and purity, but the very touch of such a principle would transmute the most of it into dross.

Jason went on to write, 

Let us unite around the Gospel. Let us be clear in emphasizing and proclaiming it. Let us underscore the importance of justification by faith alone. Let us continually point ourselves and others to the substitutionary atonement of Christ.

But as we do this, let us never say or act as though the other doctrines and teachings of the Scripture are unimportant. “All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). We can continue to uphold that which is at the heart of our faith and all the while not neglect or relegate the “secondary” doctrines to that of unimportance.

Click here to read the entire post.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Trueman on God's Work Contra Our Sin

"Indeed, one of the most amazing things about church history is the fact that the kingdom of God progresses so often in the teeth of the immortality and infidelity of the people and their leaders. To declare, then, that the church's current problems are is not to forge an unbreakable cause-effect link between our individual behaviour and the effectiveness of the gospel. And thank God that this is so! If such a link existed, who of us here today would ever have been converted? It is only through grace that God enables sinful men and women to lead others to Christ."

Carl Trueman
Reformation: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Failing to Compete4Christ

Kurt Earl is one of the football coaches at Lincoln Christian School in Lincoln, Nebraska and is the author of Compete4Christ. At that blog he encourages Christian athletes to compete on the playing field (win or lose) in a way that brings glory to their Lord.

Today he had a blog post that came from a slightly different angle than he usually provides. It was entitled How I Failed to Compete4Christ. In it he described how the game's action had sent him into a tirade that left him, in his words, "going Bobby Knight on everyone."

The problem wasn’t what I said. It wasn’t like my sentences were laced with curse words. I think what I had to say the guys needed to hear. The problem was the way I went about it. My body language and the tone and volume of my voice were unacceptable. In fact, a friend of mine who was sitting with my wife in the stands said something like, “Kurt looked like a normal coach after that interception” to my wife. Therein lays the problem. I looked normal. I looked like the world.

Click  here to read the entire post and see what happened next, and be reminded with Kurt of how the gospel enables us to not despair in the midst of our failures.

You see, our failures are great opportunities to rest and soak in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the midst of our mistakes our need for a Savior to stand in our place as the perfect sacrifice is obvious. Friday, as the reality of my mistake was sinking in, I was reminded that only through the power of Christ’s death on the cross am I forgiven and worthy of an eternity in Heaven. I was thankful that my shameful acts of sin do not count against me. Through faith in Christ I stand righteous before God.

What Motivates You?

Galatians 2:11-14 discusses Paul's confrontation of Peter over Peter's refusal to eat with gentiles. I saw a great post yesterday from Dane Ortlund dealing with this passage. In it he says,

Now how does Paul handle this? Certainly, he rebukes Peter—'I opposed him to his face' (2:11). 

Yet how does Paul do this? What is his diagnosis?

Paul identifies Peter’s error as gospel error. 'I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel' (2:14). What was Peter’s mistake? Gospel leakage.

But in what way was Peter's heart leaking out gospel? How specifically was he not believing the gospel?

The text tells us: 'fearing the circumcision party' (2:12). Fear. That was what drove Peter.

To sum up: Paul says Peter feared other men, causing him to not walk in step with the gospel, causing him to introduce all kinds of dysfunction into his relationships with other people.

Click here to read the entire post, and may we all be motivated by the gospel as opposed to fear.

One of My Favorite Bible Verses

I love passages of Scripture that boldly and clearly proclaim that God's love for us is not conditioned upon our prior obedience, but rather is what motivates us to obedience. As such, 2 Timothy 1:9 is one of my favorite verses, speaking of God, "who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began."

Praise be to God for his glorious grace!

He Holds All Things Together

Last Sunday I preached a sermon from Colossians 1:15-20 entitled "Jesus: God of Creation and Redemption." It was a joy for me to dive into this magnificent passage which so richly proclaims the preeminence of Christ over all things.

As I was preparing to preach, a comforting thought settled upon me: In verse 17, Paul states regarding Christ, "And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together." It was the second half of the verse that specifically drew my attention, "...in him all things hold together."

Often, our existence in a broken, fallen world is fraught with pain, suffering and discord. In the midst of life's turmoil, we cry out to God questioning, "Why?" only to receive a deafening silence in response. Were we to judge God's disposition toward us on the basis of our circumstances, we would seemingly be forced to often conclude that he must hate us.

But we who trust in him instead can be confident in his steadfast love, not because of present circumstances, but because of the lengths to which he would go so that we might know this love. For on the cross we see the supreme example of God's love and the perfect juxtaposition of justice and grace. And while it must have seemed to all who witnessed it as the most God-forsaken moment in history, it was actually squarely in the center of God's providential plan.

So, coming back to Colossians 1:17, I am comforted by the certain knowledge that Christ is holding all things together...even when it seems for all the world that everything is falling apart.

A Word for Preachers...Chandler on Proclaiming Gospel Reconciliation

"Thinking about gospel reconciliation in concentric circles, we are reconciled first to God in Christ, then to one another in covenant community, and third to what God is doing in the renewal of all creation. To put it another way, think of the gospel as a stone landing in a pond. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus are the cause of many ripples; they are the epicenter of God’s work in the world. The first ripple is our personal reconciliation to God. The second ripple establishes the body of Christ, as we are reconciled to each other. The third ripple is the missional posture of the church as we mobilize to proclaim the fullness of reconciliation in the gospel. In essence, we are reconciled to reconcile."

Matt Chandler
The Explicit Gospel

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Jared Wilson on a Resurrection Gospel

“A resurrection gospel is a full gospel. What we are accustomed to is a simplistic, stripped down gospel, a gospel that suggests, ‘You have issues, but Jesus died for you; now be a good person.’ The full gospel says, ‘The problem is a radical one no less serious than death and it requires a radical intervention no less powerful than resurrection’ The full gospel says that the level and quality of your messed-up-ness is complete, exhaustive, and irreconcilable by you, but the gift of God's grace extends infinitely, eternally, covering it all. It reconciles us fully to God in a way that can only be described as bringing a dead person back to life.”

Jared Wilson
Your Jesus Is Too Safe

Wednesday's* Words of Wisdom...Matt Chandler on Gospel-Centeredness

Oops! I didn't post this yesterday. But "Thursday's Words of Wisdom" just isn't quite as catchy...

"(A)ll your church attendance, all your religious activities, your Sunday school attendance medals, your journals, having a "quiet time," reading the Scriptures -- it's all in vain if you don't have Christ. When you read (1 Corinthians 15:1-7; Galatians 1:6-9; Galatians 2:20-3:5 and Philippians 3:4-9) together, you get a feel for his attack on the Christian, moralistic, therapeutic deism of his day. We are saved, sanctified, and sustained by what Jesus did for us on the cross and through the power of his resurrection. If you add to or subtract from the cross, even if it is to factor in biblically mandated religious practices like prayer and evangelism, you rob God of his glory and Christ of his sufficiency."

Matt Chandler
The Explicit Gospel

The Explicit Gospel

Not sure if you've heard about it yet, but I wanted to alert you to a new book by Matt Chandler with Jared Wilson entitled The Explicit Gospel. I've not read it yet, but Matt and Jared are two guys who love the gospel and love to proclaim it, and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of this book as soon as it becomes available this month! Check out the short video below to get a feel for the book.

A Word for Preachers...Ryle on the Nature of the Gospel

"As ever you would grow in grace, and have joy and peace in believing, beware of falling into this error. Cease to regard the Gospel as a mere collection of dry doctrines. Look at it rather as the revelation of a mighty living Being in whose sight you are daily to live. Cease to regard it as a mere set of abstract propositions and abstruse principles and rules. Look at it as the introduction to a glorious personal Friend.

"This is the kind of Gospel that the apostles preached. They did not go about the world telling men of love and mercy and pardon in the abstract. The leading subject of all their sermons was the loving heart of an actual living Christ. This is the kind of Gospel which is most calculated to promote sanctification and fitness for glory. Nothing, surely, is so likely to prepare us for that heaven where Christ’s personal presence will be all, and that glory where we shall meet Christ face to face, as to realize communion with Christ, as an actual living Person here on earth. There is all the difference in the world between an idea and a person." 

J.C. Ryle
Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots

Dane Ortlund on Staying Christian in Seminary

You may have noticed in the right sidebar of my blog that there is a section called "Most Popular Posts." At the top of the list, you'll find that of all the posts I've written, the one that has gotten the most traffic is my post entitled Seminary Doesn't Need to Kill Your Faith. It was a response to a series that Desiring God had started entitled How to Stay a Christian in Seminary and focused on the fact that far from being a place of spiritual turmoil, Covenant Theological Seminary was a sweet foretaste of heaven for me.

Fellow Covenant alum Dane Ortlund wrote a post yesterday entitled Staying Christian in Seminary in conjunction with the Desiring God series. In it he suggests that among the many good words of advice, there are two things in particular that the seminary student should remember:

1. You are justified by another.
2. You are strong in weakness.

In both of these, much is made of God's grace, and our need to be in performance-mode is minimized. If you are a seminary student, I highly recommend you read Dane's entire post. In fact, the gospel-centeredness of this post is so rich that it would benefit you greatly even if seminary is the last place you expect to find yourself.