This video from Jeff Vanderstelt is helpful. It is “uncomfortably biblical” — taking serious Paul’s instructions in 1 Timothy 3:2 and Titus 1:8. It is what I need.
Father, make us so tethered to your Word and consumed by your grace that hospitality is not a hard thing ‘to do,’ but rather an overflow of what it means to be holy in Christ. Fulfill our every resolve for good and every work of faith by your power, for your glory. Amen.
John Piper has some excellent advice on the importance of the preacher’s tone:
So I ask again: What tone should you aim at in preaching?
My answer is: Pursue the tone of the text. But let it be informed, not muted, by the tonal balance of Jesus and the apostles and by the gospel of grace.
Read the whole post at Desiring God, What Tone Should Preachers Aim At?.
This is one of the most amazing things that I have ever seen, and probably will ever see.
(HT: JT)
Before dawn, over midmorning coffee, or at the dinner table with family—whenever you read the Bible, something miraculous is happening.
The presence of desire to hear God’s word and think his thoughts testifies to the blood-bought grace by which he called you out of darkness. The mental energy and hungry soul that you bring to an open Bible is not separated from God’s saving activity. In fact, the act of your reading is part of that saving activity as God continues his perfecting work (Philippians 1:6).
And it is not merely a piece of God’s action in your personal life. It is another scene in God’s whole redemptive and revelatory activity towards mankind. Your simple reading the Bible—your interpreting—is a step forward both in the degree of your transformation and in God’s manifold wisdom being made known to the world.
Read the whole post via Desiring God.
G. C. Berkouwer writes:
Admist many dangers, the conviction has gradually become stronger that the human character of Scripture is ont an accidental or peripheral condition of the Word of God but something that legitimately deserves our full attention…
The fear that the [human element] of the doctrine of Scripture implies a threat to and an historicizing of the authority of Scripture is really the result of an artificial view of revelation. Those who hold such a view deny that shifts and changes in the history of the church can originate from a better understanding of Holy Scripture. They forget that Scripture is written in human words and consequently offers men legitimate freedom to examine these words and try to understand them (Holy Scripture, 20).
Berkouwer’s insight does not mean that we receive the New Perspective on Paul or biological evolution as the newly-founded norm. But it does mean that we confront these issues exegetically and not merely dismiss them as novel.
We understand Holy Scripture better than believers who lived in the 1300s. This is not because the Bible has changed as if it were some document of undetermined meaning, but because the church has learned how to better understand the Bible’s determined meaning.
This must be the root of faithful theology. This stance has no bias but to be true to the nature of Holy Scripture. The Bible as the inscripturate revelation of God is nothing static. It is active with divine force to accomplish the will of God through the gospel in a new day. The Church is to read upon the shoulders of our earlier generations, being aided and helped but in no way enslaved by the light shed upon them.
“The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple” (Psalm 119:130).
Note the Isaianic overtones in Psalm 144-146
Ps 144:5 Bow your heavens, O LORD, and come down!
Touch the mountains so that they smoke!
Isa 64:1 Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down,
that the mountains might quake at your presence
Psalms 146:5-9 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God, who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
Isaiah 61:1-3 The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion— to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.
My aim in reading[1] the Holy Scripture[2] is to understand[3] what the author is willing to communicate[4] about the LORD[5], by attending to the genre and grammar[6] of the text[7] in reference to the canonical testimony[8], in order to embody the gospel witness in my particular context.[9]
[1] A “hermeneutical rule” is essentially a standard that expresses an “aim in reading”
[2] “Holy Scripture” is used here as a confessional phrase that signifies a conviction that the Bible in its final form is the Word of God inscripturate.
[3] “Understand” corresponds to reading and underscores the cognitive process the authors intended the reader to employ (Eph 3:3-4; use of ge√graptai).
[4] This attends to the intention of the human author who wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21; 2 Tim 3:16).
[5] The qualifier “about the LORD” signifies two points: 1) this reading has a theological emphasis. Having been called out of darkness into light by the gospel, the aim is primarily to know and love the LORD; 2) the LORD abolishes any generic sense of divine revelation. The theological emphasis is directed at beholding the LORD Almighty—the one true God—Father, Son, and Spirit. This Trinitarian reference also implies a christotelic focus because Jesus Christ is the Word of God incarnate and the conscious focus of all saving faith and worship (John 1:1-3, 14; 14:6; Acts 4:12; 2 Cor 1:19-20; Heb 1:1-3).
[6] The genre and grammar of the text takes the human element of Holy Scripture seriously. The Word of God is written in human language, therefore conveyed in linguistic conventions of a particular culture and history divinely preserved and accessible to contemporary readers.
[7] The use of “text” rather than “author” highlights the conviction that the text is the means by which the author communicates his intention. Therefore, the text itself must be the reader’s central concern as opposed to the events and processes behind the text.
[8] The “canonical testimony” is the conviction that Holy Scripture, in its final form, is the sufficient and holistic witness of the LORD given to his church within the economy of salvation.
[9] This is to say that the purpose of reading is to live out (embody) the Word in joyful obedience to the LORD, contextualized in the specific culture (witness) to which the LORD has called me. This is the task of theology—the living out of and faithful witness to the gospel.
The Hebrew midwives emerge in the Book of Exodus as a noteworthy element of the continuing narrative. The beginning of the book features all generic names, except for these outstanding Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah (1:15). The only information we get about Moses’ parents is that his father is from the house of Levi and his mother is a Levite woman (2:1). And it’s “Pharaoh’s daughter” who gives Moses his name (lots of irony here, see 2:10).
But these Hebrew midwives—Shiphrah and Puah. The writer highlights their faith and sets them up as a foundational means through which God’s fulfills his plan to rescue Israel.
Exod 1:15 ¶ Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,
Exod 1:17 But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.
Exod 1:19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”
Exod 1:20 So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong.
Exod 1:21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.
Romans 1:19-20
“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
Paul says that there is something intelligible about God in creation that is universally plain. More precisely, God’s eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived. Paul’s content on general revelation here is describing a demographic of the humanity, i.e., a culture that has incorrectly interpreted nature. These are humans, creatures of God outside of the covenant (1:25; 2:14), who have rejected what can be clearly perceived about God in creation. Their rejection leaves them “without excuse.”
The details of this passage do not lay out for us the specifics of general revelation. They only tell the reader that people can discern enough about God in creation to make them accountable. Creation is set to be interpreted. It does not interpret itself. This passage gives us the converse of what Psalm 19 and Job 38 suggest: this is what happens when nature is interpreted without the intervention of God’s particular revelation.
Calvin writes, “[W]hile some may evaporate in their own superstitions and other deliberately and wickedly desert God, yet all degenerate from the true knowledge of him” (I.IV.1, italics mine.) This passage in Paul demands his explanation in Romans 10:13-17, concluding—“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”
If the human intellect would see God in creation, then God must sanctify the intellect by his work of grace, which we understand to be accomplished definitively in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Seeing nature is a work of gospel grace—it happens only in relation to Jesus Christ and is appropriated by the Holy Spirit.
