Passing the ’100 posts’ mark…
Sidewalk chalk on a nice spring afternoon, with your daughter, in the inner city of Minneapolis, would just not be the same if Jesus Christ had not died on the cross for my salvation. The work of Jesus as a propitiation for His people has a glorious effect on the smallest things in life.
The glory of Christ adds a depth to coloring concrete with a one-year old that I could have never imagined.
Can you tell me why?
Yesterday at Table Talk we received a treat in Robert Stein. He joined us around the table as he shared (from a 74 year-old perspective!) a little from his life as a New Testament scholar. It was a delight to hear from him. Dr. Stein is the quintessential grandfather figure. He is wise and clear and jolly, all at the same time. I would have loved to study under him.
He told us about his academic journey and had some really good things to say about hermeneutics–where he stands and how he got there in the midst of other currents of thought. It was really interesting to hear about his time at Bethel Seminary many years ago. He told us about the outside-of-the-classroom faculty discussions concerning E.D. Hirsch and hermeneutics… this is a young faculty which at that time included John Sailhamer and John Piper (two men of whom I admire and have been deeply influenced).
Now if time travel were real, I would go back and sit in on one of those talks.
Dr. Stein also told me that his wife was Dr. Sailhamer’s sixth grade teacher. This was a really neat Table Talk.
“And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried.For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them.”
(Luke 12:29-30 ESV)
Note: The ground for us to not seek or worry about what we eat and drink is that all the nations seek after these things. The point is that Christians are to be different from the rest of the world, particularly in that we do not fret over these necessities.
There is a radical reality at work every time we sit down to eat. We should ask, “Did I seek or worry after this food?” (And don’t be content to answer with an immediate “No,” lest we say it in reference to the means only, or to self-sufficiency, or because we are American.)
Our answer should be something like, “We do not eat in anxiety, for the LORD has given us our daily bread as He has promised. We eat and drink by Him and for Him. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
John MacArthur has some helpful things to say about the recent evangelical fascination with good sex (and by that I mean sex between a man and a woman within the covenant of marriage).
In an effort to present the truth about the subject, I wonder if we throw the word around to turn heads and get attention in a way that desecrates its sacredness.
Don’t talk about sex in the pulpit until you’ve read Peter Kreeft investigate for us what it means. This concluding thought summarizes his point…
“This spiritual intercourse with God is the ecstasy hinted at in all earthly intercourse, physical or spiritual. It is the ultimate reason why sexual passion is so strong, so different from other passions, so heavy with suggestions of profound meanings that just elude our grasp. No mere practical needs account for it. No mere animal drive explains it. No animal falls in love, writes profound romantic poetry, or sees sex as a symbol of the ultimate meaning of life because no animal is made in the image of God. Human sexuality is that image, and human sexuality is a foretaste of that self-giving, that losing and finding the self, that oneness-in-manyness that is the heart of the life and joy of the Trinity. That is what we long for; that is why we tremble to stand outside ourselves in the other, to give our whole selves, body and soul: because we are images of God the sexual being. We love the other sex because God loves God.”
Peter Kreeft, Is There Sex in Heaven?
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing Your praise and not be silent.
O LORD my God, I will give thanks to You forever!
Psalm 30:11-12
And I do not deserve anything worthy of dancing. My life should be spent in mourning, in exile. I deserve to live in Your anger, to always be the recipient of Your fury. I would be an object of Your righteous indignation, Your eternal wrath against me– a rebellious creature, unrepentant and depraved, dead in my sin, exchanging the truth about You for a lie, worshiping all things lesser and fake and cheap… my hope then is in those five words…
“You have turned for me.” You have done something for me. Something that I cannot do. You have turned something. You have made a change, a conversion, a switch. My mourning is now dancing. My mourning has ended and You have caused me to dance. You unclothed my sackcloth and You covered me with gladness.
You changed me.
I am still a sinner. My heart is still depraved, distracted, fickle. But You have changed me–sin has no power over me, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, my sin is forgiven, Christ’s righteousness is declared over me, imputed to me. You have made me Yours. You have died and risen to make Your enemy Your own. Yours. I am Yours. So see, my mourning is now dancing, my clothing is now gladness– and You have done this so that all that I am may sing Your praise and not be silent! You have done all this, O LORD my God, so that I must give thanks to You forever! To give thanks to You forever, for You have done it.
Jesus, thank You, forever. Amen.
You see, you and I don’t live in a series of big, dramatic moments. We don’t careen from big decision to big decision. We all live in an endless series of little moments. The character of life isn’t set in then big moments. The character of life is set in ten thousand little moments of everyday life. It’s the themes of struggles that emerge from those little moments that reveal what’s really going on in our hearts.
Paul Tripp, Whiter Than Snow, 21
So I wonder, could it be that a community that rallies under the message, “Don’t Waste Your Life”, actually wastes their lives? I mean we have read the book, own the posters, wear the t-shirts, love the theme, support the cause–and yet if our lives are as Tripp says they are, how do we ‘Don’t Waste Our Lives’ from morning to noon each day. Or what about from 5 to bedtime? How do we ‘Don’t Waste Our Lives’ on Facebook and Twitter, on blogging and reading blogs, on fantasy baseball, and basketball at Peavy Park?
I am not undermining a theology of recreation here. I am simply asking that if our lives are made up of days and days are made up of hours and hours are made up of minutes, then we can declare with passion ‘Don’t Waste Your Life’ all we want, but if we don’t get the relationship between time and our lives then we are already wasting them.
For while we were yet weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, now if it were a good person perhaps someone would dare to die for them. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:6-8
It is dangerous to be a kid growing up in church. Most of them have heard about Noah and the flood, Moses and the Red Sea, David and Goliath.
They have been taught about the animals and have colored pictures of them boarding the arc. But they were not told that this story is really about God–a God of righteousness who was raining judgment on the world. And a God of sovereign grace who was pleased to give salvation to Noah and his family.
They have done crossword puzzles on the plagues in Egypt and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea on dry ground. But they have not been told about the glory of God displayed in hardening the heart of Pharaoh, so that God would show Himself faithful to His promises thereby saving a people who did not deserve it.
They sang jingles about David and a sling and a giant falling down. But they were not told about the power of God to raise up an insignificant boy. Here is the wisdom and grace of God to defeat the enemy through one man and the whole nation of Israel benefits by this one man’s victory, like Jesus.
It is sad that many people spend their early years in the church and have never heard that the Bible is really all about God, not man.
(For helpful, Christ-exalting, God-centered children’s’ resources, check out Children Desiring God.)
Nothing is stronger than humility, which goes out of itself, or weaker than pride, which rests on its own foundation. Frustra nititur qui non innititur (He strives in vain who is not dependent). And this should be particularly observed because naturally we aspire to a kind of divinity, in setting about actions in the strength of our own abilities; whereas Christ says, ‘Without me ye’, the apostles, who were in a state of grace, ‘can do nothing’ (John 15:5). He does not say, you can do a little, but nothing. Of ourselves, how easily we are overcome! How weak we are to resist! We are as reeds shaken with every wind. We shake at the very noise and thought of poverty, disgrace or losses. We give in immeditately. We have no power over or eyes, tongues, thoughts or affections, but let sin pass in and out. How soon we are overcome by evil, whereas we should overcome evil with good…. Therefore in all, especially difficult encounters, let us lift up our hearts to Christ, who has Spirit enough for us all, in all our exigencies, and say with good Jehoshaphat, ‘We have not might… neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon thee’ (2 Chron. 20:12); the battle we fight is thine.
Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed, 114-115
Mike and Catherine Tong are hosting a time of meditation, singing, and prayer at their house from 9:30PM to 10:30PM every night this week. This time of worship is in fulfillment to Pastor John’s encouragement to set apart Holy Week.
We are reading through chapters 26-28 of Matthew’s narrative and we are meditating on Psalm 22. The Scripture reading and meditation is followed by singing and a sweet season of prayer.
The explanation for why we are meditating on Psalm 22 is found here.
This is an open invitation by the Tong’s– “Oh, magnify the LORD with us, and let us exalt his name together!”
