Tag Archives: sovereignty

What If Not My Children…

Posted on by

Adam loved his kids Cain and Abel. Lamech loved his other sons and daughters.  Terah fathered Abram, Nahor, and Haran. Abraham loved Ishmael and Issac.  Isaac loved Jacob and Esau.

It was Abel, not Cain. Noah, not the others. Abraham was called out. Issac was the son of promise. Jacob was the one.

The unfolding storyline of the Bible heralds the electing love of the LORD. This is not an issue to shirk away. It is undeniable. It is even thematic. But how should I view the possibility that my children are not elected to salvation?

This is a difficult question. I should view it painfully, humbly, and gratefully:

I should view it painfully because I love my children and I do not want to see them suffer any harm. I love them and I want to protect them.

I should view it humbly because punishment for sin is a punishment that we all should have to pay. My children are guilty. They have sinned against God. The role of creature to Creator supersedes the role of child to parent.

I should view it gratefully because the punishment I should pay has already been paid for me by Jesus Christ on the cross. I should be grateful because he has given children to me as my children–children of parents who embrace the gospel by faith. This is the reality that we live in. I don’t base my theology on the possible-would be-alternative realities. ‘God could do this, he could do that, etc.’ No, no—my theology is based on revelation, what God has done and said he would do, testified to in the Holy Scripture and accomplished in my own life.

God has saved me and my wife. God has given us children. God is making it so that my children hear the gospel all the time from parents who jovially embrace it as the best news in the universe. God has made it–predestined it–that my children have parents who believe the gospel and daily pray that they will believe it too. It did not have to be this way. But this is the way that God has made it. This is the right note that I think paedobaptists and more covenantal perspectives hit on.  My children have already received a blessed privilege and everything in reality suggests that they will put their faith in Jesus just like their parents have and continually pray that they will. Everything in this reality suggests that Jesus atoned for their sins on the cross just as he atoned for mine.

Father, please lavish upon my children the grace to worship by the Holy Spirit, glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh. Amen.

The Way of Wisdom

Posted on by

Guest Post by Nathan McCavery

Decisions. We all have to make them everyday – some important, most trivial. As followers of Christ, we’re desperate to make sure every decision is pleasing to God and might be part of His will for our lives.

One of the subtle dangers of this can be that we overcomplicate, overthink and overanalyse, agonising over every single decision. Wrestling to try and decipher where God would have us go and what He would have us do often leaves us confused, frustrated and spiritually drained. “If only God would show us what He wants us to do and we’ll do it in an instant” we think.

How quickly we forget and become complacent with the amazing miracle that God has revealed Himself to us in the person of His Son, and in His Word He’s given us all that we need as a guide for life! (2 Peter 1:3)

Kevin DeYoung in his book Just Do Something spells out God’s will for our lives.

1. God’s will is that we live holy, set-apart lives: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thessalonians 4:3)

2. We are to always rejoice, pray and give thanks: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)

3. We are to know God’s will so we can bear fruit and know Him better. “And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (Colossians 1:9)

4. The will of God is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. “Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is…be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:17-18)

God’s will isn’t that we struggle with every decision, becoming anxious, fretting for fear of choosing the wrong path and mistaking a lack of activity for piety. Paul tells us that “[God] works all things to the counsel of His will” (Ephesians 1:11) Jesus Himself tells us to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33)

DeYoung closes his book with the following paragraph:

So the end of the matter is this: Live for God. Obey the Scriptures. Think of others before yourself. Be holy. Love Jesus. And as you do these things, do whatever else you like, with whomever you like, wherever you like, and you’ll be walking in the will of God.

If we understand this, it can only have a liberating, peace-giving effect on us. What an encouragement to know that provided we live as the Bible tells us to, we are free to do as we please. So let’s make some bold decisions with confidence that we are walking in God’s will, the way of wisdom, and let’s attempt great things for God’s glory.

The Epitome of Folk Religion

Posted on by

But we will do everything that we have vowed, make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we did, both we and our fathers, our kings and our officials, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For then we had plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no disaster. But since we left off making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine.” And the women said, “When we made offerings to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands’ approval that we made cakes for her bearing her image and poured out drink offerings to her?” (Jeremiah 44:17-19 ESV)

The people of Judah do not get it. Jeremiah has been pouring himself out in warning them of coming judgment. They have forsaken the God who created them and called them his own. How hideous. We can’t get this picture. We don’t know what it means for our creation to replace devotion to us for headlong affection for that which does not satisfy. It is atrocious. It deserves wrath of  a kind that we cannot fathom.

And here is the people’s logic: “Hey, when we worshiped the queen of heaven we had enough food to eat and weren’t threatened at all. Therefore, in order to have enough food to eat and not be threatened at all, then we must worship the queen of heaven.”

We are prone to revert to his mentality often. It is a human thing. We are dumbly pragmatic. The people of Judah should have looked beyond the transient logic of their current situation and instead listened to God’s Word. But that is exactly what they did not do. Over and over the Book of Jeremiah tells us that they did not listen, very reminiscent of Deuteronomy (Jer 6:10; 7:13, 26-27; 13:11; 16:12; 17:23, etc.; cf. esp. Deut. 28). The calling is to hear the word of God despite what our immediate circumstances may look like. This is what faith is.

And in order to have that, it takes a certain kind of heart (Jer. 31:33; Deut. 30:6).

Love and the Destiny-Fulfilling Obligation to my Neighbor

Posted on by

Love involves my acknowledgement that I am obliged by my neighbor as a reality given to me by God, a reality which I would often like to evade but which encounters me with a transcendent imperative force. Why is this ‘transcendent’ ground for works of human fellowship theologically decisive? Because thereby my neighbour, the one with whom I stand in relation, is given to me, forming part of my destiny in the company of the saints. My neighbour is a summons to fellowship, because in him or her I find a claim on me that is not causal or fortuitous (and thereby dispensable) but rather precedes my will and requires that I act in my neighbour’s regard. Without a sense that fellowship is (God-) given, my neighbour would not present a sufficiently strong claim to disturb me out of complacency and indifference into active, initiative-taking regard… My neighbour obliges me because he or she is the presence to me of the appointment and vocation of the holy God. Without givenness, without fellowship as more than a contingent fact, without the neighbour as a divine call, there is only my will. But, if fellowship is a condition and not merely one possibility for my ironic self to entertain, then in building common life– in culture, politics and ethics– I resist the relationlessness of sin into which I may drift, and, sanctified by Christ and Spirit, I realize my nature as one created for holiness.

John Webster, Holiness, 97

This is one of the best paragraphs that has ever been written in the history of mankind.

His Beloved: On the Cost of ‘Salvation Through Judgment’

Posted on by

In light of yesterday’s post, notice what J.G. McConville writes about the Book of Jeremiah:

The adoption language of new covenant, especially in Hebrews, draws attention to the promise in Jeremiah (and behind it Deuteronomy) that God himself would act decisively to bring about the salvation that had always eluded his people because of their hardness of heart. The coming of Jesus is thus presented as the culmination of that “incarnational” trend, already visible in Hosea and Jeremiah, in which God commits himself, at cost, to the salvation of his people.

(J.G. McConville, Jeremiah in “Theological Interpretation of the Old Testament,” 217ff, emphasis mine)

If salvation through judgment is a biblical-theological theme (and I think so, see Dr. Hamilton‘s article here on Acts), then we should view God’s cost in saving to involve some sort of anguish. What I mean is that we should not view the judgment aspect of salvation to be arbitrary, or to be a mere means to an end. It is a means, yes, but it is a real means. It really costs something. The LORD is not zapping lightening out of the finger tips of one hand while he polishes his nails on the other. He feels the weight of his wrath that is justly poured out. He knows more about it than we do.

His House, His Heritage, His Beloved

Posted on by

I have forsaken my house; I have abandoned my heritage; I have given the beloved of my soul into the hands of her enemies. (Jeremiah 12:7)

Judah deserved to be judged. The book of Jeremiah is committed to making sure that the reader gets this. God’s people have forsaken him. They hewed out their own cisterns. They have ignored his voice (note the particular language of the Pentateuch, 7:22-24; 9:26). They have worshiped Baal. They have refused to repent. Therefore, the LORD will send a punisher from the north (4:1-9:26). It’s going to be ugly.

Do you think that the Father is happy about this? Is he malicious? Do you hear a creepy, deep-voiced laugh? How do you picture him?

I hope that you envision none of the above. Look at Jeremiah 12:7. The LORD comments on the reality of his righteous anger. He is far from laughing. There is anguish in his judgment. This is his people–his house, his heritage, his beloved.

Somehow and in some way, God can both exercise his anger in righteousness and exercise his anger with sorrow. Stop. Don’t try to picture that. You just can’t. “Who are you, O man, to think that God is only capable of doing the things that you can encapsulate in your feeble mind?”

It’s hard. It’s not us. But it is true. God can do that. He has done that. He feels indignation everyday (Ps. 7:11) and he rejoices over his people with gladness (Zeph. 3:17). He really poured out the full cup of his wrath on Jesus, while at the same time, Jesus died as the Son in whom the Father is well-pleased.

May the LORD grant us grace to shake our heads in awe, bow before him with humble hearts, and be stunned that he would set his love on us…

‘Nor Did It Come Into My Mind’

Posted on by

‘Cut off your hair and cast it away; raise a lamentation on the bare heights, for the LORD has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.’

“For the sons of Judah have done evil in my sight, declares the LORD. They have set their detestable things in the house that is called by my name, to defile it. And they have built the high places of Topheth, which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind.”  (Jeremiah 7:29-31)

The LORD’s judgment on Judah is inevitable. They have done evil in his sight. Detestable things, he says. They have defiled the holiness of his presence. They came together and decided to build some high places. The laid the foundation, cut the stones, and constructed this tower of sorts to serve one purpose–burn their sons and daughters. They didn’t snap their fingers and this thing just came to be. This calf didn’t pop out of the fire, either. They labored. They spent time. They poured out their sweat and energy.

How sick do you have to be? I just wonder that at some point, maybe at least on one day, a crew member asked his foreman, “So we’re going to burn our children right here? Should it be a little wider? You think this stone is durable enough?”

The atrocity that this is cannot be fully told. God was about to unleash his wrath. He was going to pour out his anger on individuals that he owned in his sovereignty. He was going to judge individuals for evil that he has the power to stop them from committing. And yet, notice what he says about their malicious activity–”which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind.”

He never told Judah to do that. This was their evil. Matter of fact, this evil did not even come into the mind of God. What does that mean? I think it is an anthropomorphism. It is the emphatic way that the LORD is saying that he is not the author of this evil. It never even crossed his mind.

QUESTION: how does that work? ANSWER: I don’t really know.

I don’t know how that works but I know that it does. God is sovereign in such a way and man left alone is in bondage to sin in such a way that man can commit evil for which he is morally culpable and of which God can say “nor did it come into my mind.”

Baseball: The Supremacy of Jesus and the Goodness of God

Posted on by

“All things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16).

That includes baseball. On Wednesday I had the memorable honor of saying a few words at South Johnston Baseball Camp. I started attending the high school’s annual baseball camp when I was six years old. I went every year until I started high school and then began to be an instructor at the camp even through college. I love everything about it. One week in the month of June for most of my life has been spent there from 9AM to noon.

I learned a lot from baseball. The preeminent lesson: baseball makes a wonderful game, but a lousy god. It is a game to be played and enjoyed, but not to be worshiped. This reorientation to baseball and gifts of every kind has/is transforming my life (We shouldn’t say “been there, read the book, got that” — treasuring God above all things and inhaling his goodness is a way of life, not a truth statement that we check off).

Baseball or children or a juicy T-bone are good things. But they are better things when we understand that they come from Jesus. And that they are for Jesus. I want to watch a game, hug my daughters, and eat steak in the recognition that my enjoyment of those things is costly. Jesus Christ died for me, raised me from deadness, and brought me to God so that I might enjoy… enjoy God’s gifts, and therefore, enjoy God who gives out of the abundance of his free grace through Jesus.

Now I didn’t say all of this to the campers at South Johnston, but it was driving everything from my encouragement for them to play hard on the field to spending more time doing tee work. I want it to drive everything.

I – and yet Not I: Christ in Me

Posted on by

‘God takes the initiative, and redresses the world of men which has turned away from Him in fear and enmity’ (Weinel). Thence have we come (iii. 21).– And yet: Are we? Do we have? Are we competent? Do we come? Yes! if it be clearly understood that we are not ‘we’. This disposition is ours only inasmuch as we believe; only inasmuch as, by the death of Christ, the line of death has passed vertically through our lives; and inasmuch as we, consequently, remain still in fear and trembling, in awe and gratitude. I–and yet not I: Christ in me. The new man has no existence except non-existence; for the pre-eminence of his origin lies in the miracle of God, in His beginning, in His creative act–in the death of Christ.

Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 163

Grace is Shorthand for God’s Freedom in Our Utter Inability

Posted on by

The grace of God in bestowing this gift is most free. It was what God was under no obligation to bestow. He might have rejected fallen man, as he did the fallen angels. It was what we never did anything to merit: ’twas given while we were yet enemies, and before we had so much as repented. It was from the love of God that saw excellency in us to attract it; and it was without expectation of ever being rewarded for it… And ’tis from mere grace that the benefits of Christ are applied to such and such particular persons. Those that are called and sanctified are to attribute it alone to the good pleasure of God’s goodness, by which they are distinguished. He is sovereign and hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will, he hardens.

Jonathan Edwards, God Glorified in Man’s Dependence, 204.