Radical Review

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At least twice now I have referenced in a message David Platt’s book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream.

Today I received an email from someone with a link to a Gospel Coalition review of Platt’s book by Kevin DeYoung.

DeYoung expresses some helpful push back to some of the potentially more extreme aspects of Radical or at least they way certain things might be taken along the way by the less mature, more emotionally stirred, less critically insightful reader.

Uniquely it includes a response in turn from Platt, something you don’t see/read every day. It’s worth the read. Here’s a sample from DeYoung’s critique:

We must do more to plant the plea for sacrificial living more solidly in the soil of gospel grace. Several times David talks about the love of Christ as our motivation for radical discipleship or the power of God and the means for radical discipleship. But I didn’t sense the strong call to obedience was slowly marinated in God’s lavish mercy. I wanted to see sanctification more clearly flowing out of justification.

I commend this interchange to the reader as an example of redemptive debate. Would that more of God’s people engaged in this kind of critique/response with such gospel grace. You can read the entire piece here.

In the end result, risks notwithstanding to some of Platt’s bold and passionate pleas, I personally want to embrace the five-fold practical challenge of application with which Platt leaves his readers and pray for a church full of folks who will do the same.

A Greek Guide to Getting Close to Jesus (Part One)

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Today’s message from John 12:20-26 is now on the website. You can listen to the audio here.

My synopsis of the text was as follows:

The Spirit of God working through John wants us to go with the Greeks. He would have us express the same desire – we would see Jesus. He means for us to take our cue from them. He wants us to believe in Jesus in light of their example, as He does with everything else He shows us in the gospel from the signs Jesus did to the things He said (John 20:30-31).

Let me put it in the form of a theme as always. Follow the Greeks’ lead in seeking Jesus toward believing in Him as the Messiah. You will need four things from their example if you want to get somewhere close in proximity that their search brought them: deliberately focused intentions for Jesus, directly engaged connections to Jesus, dramatically altered perceptions of Jesus, and decidedly shared affections with Jesus.

I mentioned a link to an interview with Mark Dever of  9 Marks called Culture of Discipling that gives some great principles for doing the second of these things from the Greeks’ example. I highly recommend it. You can listen to that audio program here.

May this be a week where we draw closer to Jesus and help others do the same!

How People Change – Our Real Problem

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Vacation for me, among other things, means time to read. Lots of leisurely, lovely, luxurious time to devour a book from cover-to-cover without lots of stops and starts.

I got to do that this past week in NC with How People Change (Tim Lane & Paul Tripp, New Growth Press, 2006, 258 pages).

I liked it and I hated it at the same time.

I liked it because of its practical aim. The goal of this book is to help you grasp the implications of the good news of Jesus Christ for your identity and the daily trials and temptations you face (p. 36). Who doesn’t face daily trials and temptations? Who doesn’t at times feel stuck within a malaise of difficulties that seem to leave a believer powerless and decidedly unspiritual? I know I do.

I found lots of good stuff here, biblically-based and practically-applied principles for addressing how God works through the heat of trials to reveal the thorns of our flesh to lead us to the cross of Christ to bring forth the fruit of the gospel. That’s the book in a nutshell.

I hated it because it put me on a path of examining my heart that revealed way too much of its sinfulness. Don’t you hate that?

This book reminded me of one of the truths I have struggled most to accept in the process of my personal sanctification. In the immortal words of Pogo, We have met the enemy and he is us!

While external conditions can be very influential in our lives and should not be ignored, the Bible says that they are only the occasion for sin, not the cause. Difficulties in life do not cause sin. Our background, relationships, situation, and physical condition only provide the opportunity for the thoughts, words, and actions to reveal whatever is already in our hearts. Our hearts are the ultimate cause of our responses, and where the true spiritual battle is fought … [while] we must never minimize our suffering – ours or anyone else’s … we must make the important distinction between the occasion for sin and the ultimate cause of sin. This will determine what you think the solution to the problem will be …The bible says that my real problem is not psychological (low self-esteem or unmet needs), social (bad relationships and influences), historical (my past), or physiological (my body). They are significant influences, but my real problem is spiritual (my straying heart and my need for Christ). I have replaced Christ with something else, and as a consequence, my hearts is hopeless and powerless. Its responses reflect its bondage to whatever it is serving instead of Christ. Ultimately my real problem is a worship disorder.

So during my week of vacation in NC the Lord confronted me with my impatience, my hero-worship, my love of comfort, my sense of entitlement, oh I could go on. But how depressing a thought is that?

Thank God Lane and Tripp take the reader to the gospel, my only hope and your only hope.

If you are feeling stuck and won’t mind the pain to get to the gain of the gospel, get a copy of this book and read it before you go on vacation so you don’t ruin your vacation.

Hope in the Haze of the Mundane

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Sunday’s message from Zechariah 1:18-21 is now on the website. You can listen to the audio here.

Reflecting on the four craftsmen of this passage, Matthew Henry wrote:

Which way soever the church is threatened with mischief, and opposition given to its interests, God can find out ways and means to check the force, to restrain the wrath, and make it turn to his praise.

Lift up your eyes and see the justice of God in the glory of His Son.

A Theology of Horrible Things

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Like the rest of you, I suspect, Nancy and I have remained glued to the TV the last twenty-four hours watching the horrific images coming out of Japan after the devastating earthquake hit yesterday afternoon. Not even one week’s vacation to rural NC will allow an entire escape from reality in our age of near instantaneous global communication.

In the interest of rest and ministering to Nan’s dear aging mother, I have kept blogging at arm’s length thus far. But catastrophic events like 8.9 magnitude earthquakes demand some kind of pastoral comment, particularly when one’s church hosts students from Japan at the same time their homeland gets rocked by creation groaning beneath the weight of the futility to which God has subjected it (see Romans passage below).

Rather than give my own take from the Scriptures for biblical perspective on the crisis and in the interest of preserving as much rest as we can summon from our week-long trip, I will turn to Dr. R. C. Sproul for his help. My mother-in-law happens to keep a copy of his book Now, That’s a Good Question! on one of her book shelves.

He answers the question Why does God let random shootings, fatal accidents, and other horrible things occur? this way:

Since we believe that God is the author of this planet and is sovereign over it, it’s inevitable that we ask where he is when these terrible things take place. I think the Bible answers that over and over again from different angles and in different ways. We find our first answer, of course, in the book of Genesis, in which we’re told of the fall of humanity. God’s immediate response to the transgression of the human race against his rule and authority was to curse the earth and human life. Death and suffering entered the world as a direct result of sin. We see the concrete manifestation of this in the realm of nature, where thorns become part of the garden and human life is now characterized by the sweat of the brow and the pain that attends even the birth of a baby. This illustrates the fact that the world in which we live is a place that is full of sorrows and tragedy. But we must never conclude that there’s a one-to-one correlation in this life between suffering and the guilt of the people on whom tragedies fall. If there were no sin in the world, there would be no suffering. There would be no fatal accidents, no random shootings. Because sin is present in the world, suffering is present in the world, but it doesn’t always work out that if you have five pounds of guilt, you’re going to get five pounds of suffering. That’s the perception that the book of Job labors to dispel, as does Jesus’ answer to the question about the man born blind ( John 9:1-11). On the other hand, the Bible makes it clear that God lets these things happen and in a certain sense ordains that they come to pass as part of the present situation that is under judgment. He has not removed death from this world. Whether it’s what we would consider an untimely death or a violent death, death is part of the nature of things. The only promise is that there will come a day when suffering will cease altogether. The disciples asked Jesus about similar instances—for example, the Galileans’ blood that was mingled with the sacrifices by Pilate or the eighteen people who were killed when a temple collapsed. The disciples asked how this could be. Jesus’ response was almost severe. He said, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish,” again bringing the question back to the fact that moral wickedness makes it feasible for God to allow these kinds of dreadful things to take place in a fallen world.

As we engage various people about the situation in Japan, let’s watch for opportunities to bring, with sensitivity, a biblical worldview to bear on the conversation when the Lord opens the door for the same.

People may not like the answer, but the Word of God does speak to a theology of horrible things meant to lead ultimately to another theology, the good news of the gospel of Jesus, who will deliver creation from its groaning by making all things new, including us (Romans 8:19-24).

A Triumphal Entry of a Different Kind (Part 1)

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This morning’s message from John 12:12-19 is now on the website. You can listen to the audio here.

The theme and outline for this two-part series on the triumphal entry are as follows:

The distinctly unique aspects of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem call for our belief in Him as the Messiah, God’s Son.

  • He embraced Messianic acclaim
  • He realized Messianic expectations
  • He performed Messianic works
  • He fulfilled Messianic purpose.

We considered only the first in part one.

John MacArthur made this insight about the significance of Jesus’ hour coming to pass at the same time as Passover:

Jesus did it in His own time and forced the whole issue, brought about the whole thing in order that it might happen exactly on the Passover day, fitting that when all the other lambs were being sacrificed, the One true Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world would be sacrificed on the very same day that all the rest of the sacrifices were going on. So Jesus was not at the mercy of the plots of men, but rather was bringing about the forcing of the issue of His own death so that it would happen on a day when He planned it and God planned it before the world began, not when the Jewish leaders decided it would happen.

His coming into Jerusalem precipitated the crisis of His death in God’s appointed time. That’s why He so openly and freely embraced the Messianic acclaim offered Him along the road toward Jerusalem when every time before He had refused the same.

Hail to the Lamb who was slain from before the foundation of the world!

Hope for the Lazy Man

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One of our Oxford Club brothers sent me an intriguing article on the gospel and responsibility.

The author shows how the gospel can make a difference in one’s motivations when it comes to work of all kinds.

For example:

God’s action to save the world was born out of His love for the world. The lazy man will have a hard time loving others rightly if he does not understand how he has been loved. He must be affected and empowered by love before he can genuinely and energetically love others. Otherwise, his love will be various forms of self-interest. Until a man has been changed by the Gospel he will not be able to model the Gospel in his life. Rather than being motivated by the Gospel he will be motivated by behavioralism. He may do good deeds, but he has not been rightly affected at the level of his motivations. For example, the Gospel-centered man gets up in the morning and says, “I get to serve God today because He is happy with me.” The behavioristic man gets up in the morning and says, “I have to serve God today so He will be happy with me.” The former is motivated by love, while the latter is motivated by either guilt, fear, shame, duty, or self-interest.

Check it out by clicking on here.

And brothers, hope to see you tomorrow!

Valiquette Update

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On Saturdays we come to the V’s in our call list/prayer directory with only two entries.

One of them is the Valiquette family, missionaries from our church with a burden for Italy.

Recently they altered their missional trajectory to pursue church planting in Salerno with the Acts 29 network.

Click on below for a video interview with that network you can watch to catch a Q&A Jutty did with one of their reps. I encourage you to do so for the purpose of knowing how strategically you can pray for the Valiquette’s and their dream for seeing a church planted in southern Italy.

Jutty does a great job in sharing the passion of his heart. Takes a little over twelve minutes but worth your time.

Acts 29 Italy – Interview from Justin Valiquette on Vimeo.

Hustle & Give in the Workplace

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Richard D. Phillips makes a strong case in his book The Masculine Mandate for industry as part of a Christian man’s godly identity.

In chapter three, Man’s Sacred Calling to Work, he writes:

In our fallen world, shadowed by the curse of death and futility, we either work hard or our families suffer. According to the book of Proverbs, industry is an essential characteristic that men should cultivate: “A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich” (Prov. 10:4): “Whoever is slothful will not roast his game, but the diligent man will get precious wealth” (Prov. 12:27). Yet I sometimes hear pastors or Christian psychologists tell men they should never be late for dinner or have to travel away from home for work. I disagree. It’s true that men should not pursue their work so single-mindedly that family duties are excluded or consistently compromised. But in our fallen world, men have an obligation to hustle and give their all in the workplace–and this may involve some late nights and business trips. Of all men, Christians should work especially hard, giving more than an honest day’s work for a day’s wage (p. 19).

This Saturday morning from 7 AM to 9 AM at the church office we will continue our discussion of Phillips’ book in this very chapter. To access the pdf study guide click on The Masculine Mandate – SG #3. Remember to bring your own breakfast.

We’re still getting started in this new resource, so don’t hesitate to join us if this might be your first time!

Faith’s Ultimate Display (Part Two)

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Today’s message from John 12:1-11 is now on the web. You can listen to the audio here.

Here’s how I closed the sermon:

So, do we get it? Compared to Mary we have so much more to go on this side of the cross! If we do get it, if we understand the truth of what Jesus has done and it grips us such that we believe in Him as the Messiah, our Savior, it will lead to commitment marked like hers with even extravagant devotion – intensely personal, financially sacrificial, extremely deferential, publically unconventional, and spiritually insightful attachment.

Oswald Chambers, in My Utmost for His Highest, said this:

There is only one relationship that matters, and that is your personal relationship to a personal Redeemer and Lord. Let everything else go, but maintain that at all costs, and God will fulfill His purpose through your life. One individual life may be of priceless value to God’s purpose, and yours may be that life.

Let everything else go, but maintain your personal relationship to Jesus at all costs.