The Vain Bright Lamps of Creation

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saturn

Were he to have had access to modern technology and therefore able to view the likes of Saturn in this photo would John Calvin have referred to it, though stunningly bright and glorious, still vain in some respect?

Absolutely. Creation, though brilliantly putting the glory of God on display, especially in the far reaches of the universe, serves only to leave man without excuse as to God’s existence. It cannot, in and of itself, lead man to a personal knowledge of God and rescue him from his condition of fallen sinner (Rom. 1:20).

This is why Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, speaks of the vanity, of even so many bright lamps.

In vain for us, therefore, does Creation exhibit so many bright lamps lighted up to show forth the glory of its Author. Though they beam upon us from every quarter, they are altogether insufficient of themselves to lead us into the right path. Some sparks, undoubtedly, they do throw out; but these are quenched before they can give forth a brighter effulgence. Wherefore, the apostle, in the very place where he says that the worlds are images of invisible things, adds that it is by faith we understand that they were framed by the word of God (Heb. 11:3); thereby intimating that the invisible Godhead is indeed represented by such displays, but that we have no eyes to perceive it until they are enlightened through faith by internal revelation from God (Book First, Chapter 5, No. 14).

At this Christmas Eve of 2009 are we not indeed grateful for not just the general revelation of creation, but even more so the special revelation of the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ (John 1:14), and the sacred writings that are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3:15)?

A million Saturns on display in the universe cannot bring forth that necessary internal revelation from God which only His Son and the holy Scriptures can. The people who walked in darkness have indeed seen a great light (Isaiah 9:2)!

A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Your Study Guide for 01/03/10

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CarsonAnyone who has hung around our Oxford Club for Men group knows I believe in study guides big time for working our way through books in a way that facilitates critical thinking.

For our equipping hour emphasis in the New Year I plan to do this for D. A. Carson’s book which we will focus on in a church-wide effort to transfrom our knowledge of God in prayer.

Here is the guide for the preface and introduction. I am now working on my second read of this great tool. I trust you will get into it soon and use these questions as an aid to your learning and transformation process.

  1. What are some of the reasons for which you find it difficult to pray?
  2. How do you react to the author’s allegation regarding “the sheer prayerlessness that characterizes so much of the Western church?” What are some passages of Scripture that you can think of or find that paint a picture of prayerfulness among God’s people? List two or three insights you gain from these passages.
  3. What is Carson’s aim in this book (pp. 9-10)? How do you react to his purpose and approach?
  4. What do you believe is the most urgent need in the church of the Western world today? What things does Carson hypothesize for answers and what thoughts and feelings does your reading generate?
  5. Where does Carson finally land on the question of most urgent need in the church and why?
  6. How does prayer fit into addressing this need according to the author?
  7. How do you react to the quote by R. M. M’Cheyene, “What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is, and no more” and/or the quote by J. I. Packer, “I believe that prayer is the measure of the man, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face”?
  8. How would you evaluate the “delight quotient” of your own praying and why?
  9. What are you prepared to do in light of this introduction and your understanding of Carson’s aim in writing this book (see pp. 17-18)?

A Particularly Disturbing Question

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ProdigalI have just finished reading Tim Keller’s book, The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith (Dutton, 2008, 138 pages).

In it he presents a treatment of the familiar story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. He is inclined to rename the parable The Two Lost Sons. He believes that Jesus takes aim in the story at both irreligious outsiders and moralistic insiders. Both, Keller claims, are lost and in need of salvation. Jesus, in particular, he argues, targets moralists in telling the story to show them their need for the gospel as much as the younger brother types who give themselves to profligate waste.

Early on Keller tips his hand where he is headed with all this by offering his answer to the question why people like Jesus but not the church.

Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsider Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think (p. 15-16).

When I first read that I put a question mark in the margin. I am not entirely sure I agree with the logic behind Keller’s argument. I’ve learned to do that over time rather than just take everything that comes down the pike from a respected author (and make no mistake, I highly respect him – I just purchased copies of his book The Reason for God for several members of my family for Christmas).

My question to his question is does the conclusion in the last sentence from that quote hold water? I’ve been thinking about it on and off ever since. Is the church in corporate worship as an entity of God’s called out ones supposed to be inherently attractional to either kind of brother? It seems to me that rightly done the church gathered may be offensive to either crowd and only attractive to the gospel enthralled given its unique purposes.

I haven’t come near to the end of my reflections on this question but I wonder if we simply need to be more concerned with taking the gospel of our extravagantly gracious God “without” to the lost (that seems to me to be the thrust of the story in Luke 15 as far as Jesus’ aim is concerned) and “within” the church more consistently rebuke both the wayward and the legalistic who think they know Jesus but deny hin by their actions until they do come to grips with the heart of the Christian faith which is gazing upon the glory of the grace of Jesus.

What do you think?

By the way, I recommend the book. Definitely a worthwhile read.

The Blessedness of Making Beef Bourguignon with Your Beloved

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Beef Borg 001

Sometimes a guy just has to take stock of how good he’s got it. Today is such a day. My 35th anniversary. That’s right. Thirty-five years ago today Nancy and I tied the knot. Don’t know what we were thinking getting married four days before Christmas but somehow we pulled it off. Definitely would have picked a different time of year if I had it to do over again!

I could reflect on a lot of aspects of married life with my bride that I treasure, some more spiritual than the theme of this post, but somehow it just seems fitting to camp out here for some reason.

On Friday, our day off, Nancy asked me what I would like to do with our day. I replied, “I would like to make beef bourguignon!” Not your average day off response from me, so let me explain.

Recently we saw the movie Julie and Julia. Twice. Yes, I admit it. Please, no mail or negative comments. I found the film so redemptive on so many fronts, not that it’s perfect, that I wanted us to see it a second time (at the dollar theater, by the way, on Tuesday for 75 cents). It is filled with substantive themes like living life with passion and purpose, sweet fellowship with friends, feasting with joy, blogging (the main character blogs about her making over the course of one year every one of Julia Child’s recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking), writing (a parallel theme is Child’s writing her cookbook), and, in many ways, marriage. Much of the movie concentrates on the relationships both women had with their husbands throughout the ups and downs of their writing experience. Beef bourguignon is one of the signature recipes in the story. It looked so mouth watering good I was dying to try it.

So sneaky me, I bought Nancy Mastering the Art of French Cooking at Costco for our anniversary (OK, it was really for me) and proposed on Friday that we tackle the recipe together. And we did! We wrote out the menu, shopped together, and spent two hours that afternoon following the recipe (man, am I glad I married a home ec major – talk about complicated) and popped it in the oven for three hours.

That night we sat down to a sumptuous feast of tender beef simmered in red wine with white onions and mushrooms, poured generously over egg noodles with a side dish of peas. And we just lingered at the table. We talked. We laughed. We listened to Christmas carols. We fellowshipped.

Little wonder Jesus describes the intimacy of fellowship with Him like coming for dinner in Rev. 3:20.

My marriage and its intimacy points me to a greater more permanent, more satisfying intimacy I will share with Jesus in the kingdom forever.

Man, am I ever grateful to get that truth and to share thirty-five years and counting with just the sweetest, most faithful woman on the planet. OK, I’m biased, but you have to admit, blessed, indeed, I am.

Nancy, OGC makes me want to be a better pastor. You are the only one who makes me want to be a better man. Thank you. I love you. Always will, by God’s grace. Here’s to our 70th, Lord willing.

Many Ways to Destroy a Church

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Carson crossMore than once recently I have come across this quote from D.A. Carson (in his book The Cross and Christian Ministry).

At first I wasn’t inclined to post it. But something happened to me during the silent communion time this morning that changed that.

During the fourth movement of the communion we prayed through the flock. My pastoral role means I know more about everybody on the list than almost anyone else in the church. While I pray through parts of the flock every day, I don’t often pray through it in its entirety. As I worked my way quickly through the list it dawned on me how many issues I prayed for related to peacemaking in troubled relationships of all kinds. No surprise that Dr. Carson includes such things in his list of ways to destroy a church.

The ways of destroying the church are many and colorful. Raw factionalism will do it. Rank heresy will do it. Taking your eyes off the cross and letting other, more peripheral matters dominate the agenda will do it-admittedly more slowly than frank heresy, but just as effectively over the long haul. Building the church with superficial ‘conversions’ and wonderful programs that rarely bring people into a deepening knowledge of the living God will do it. Entertaining people to death but never fostering the beauty of holiness or the centrality of self-crucifying love will build an assembling of religious people, but it will destroy the church of the living God. Gossip, prayerlessness, bitterness, sustained biblical illiteracy, self-promotion, materialism-all of these things, and many more, can destroy a church. And to do so is dangerous: ‘If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple (1 Cor. 3:17).” It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

During this holiday season, when relationships can be strained by expectations and disappointments galore, may we be a peacemaking people in our homes and in our church that the enemy not have his way in destroying either.

Take Care Then How You Hear

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The Bible has a lot to say about how preachers are to preach (2 Tim. 3:16-4:4). It also has some things to say to those who listen. In Luke 18:8 Jesus bids His hearers to take care then how you hear.

Tim Challies has grappled with how to take care in listening to preaching in a blog post entitled Being a Diligent Listener. He writes:

We set high expectations for our pastors, and rightly so, I think. Ministers of the Word have a high calling before God to be his mouthpiece, to bring his Word to his people. We expect that every Sunday we will sit under the pastor’s teaching and learn sacred truths from his mouth. We expect that he will spend his week studying Scripture and digging deeply into God’s Word so that he can teach us something on Sunday that will change our lives. We expect him to be true to Scripture, to make a good presentation of it and to keep us engaged all the while. It is a difficult and often thankless task.

What we consider less often, I think, is that while a pastor bears great responsibility in preparing for and delivering the Word of God each Sunday, the listener shares in the responsibility. The church has no place for an audience. We are all to be involved in the preaching, even as listeners. We may drive home on Sunday muttering about the pastor’s lack of preparation after a less-than-engaging sermon, but how often do we drive away reflecting on our own lack of preparation? How often should we trace our lack of learning or our lack of engagement right back to our own lack of preparation?

You can read the rest of the post here.

As I give myself to preparation for tomorrow’s message in John 7:37-52, may you as well give yourself to the kind of preparation Challies commends. I will meet you somewhere in the middle tomorrow morning, Lord willing.

Another Servant of God in a Fight with Cancer

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I learned recently that Pastor Matt Chandler of the The Village Church was diagnosed with a tumor in his right frontal lobe. He collapsed with a seizure on Thanksgiving. Since then he underwent an operation to remove the tumor. Things have spread. Further treatment options are under consideration.

Pray for Pastor Matt and his family, OGC. You understand better than most. Take a moment and watch the little over four minute video by Matt here. So much of what he says was exactly where God had me in ’05 in my battle with head and neck cancer.

I wish him, his family, and his church well. If God is pleased to bring him back, he will come back with greater force.

Matt, my heart goes out to you. I’m in your corner. Fight the good fight. Dying is gain but for the sake of others it may be best to remain.

Another Way to Stimulate Our Prayer Lives

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Someone shared a website with me where you can submit your email to receive daily prayers that utilize the Bible in the first person. The purpose of the site, edited by Ligon Duncan and others, is to encourage, promote and assist biblical prayer.

For example, I received this copy today:

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you or in comparison with you. When my flesh and my heart fail, Lord, be the strength of my heart and my portion forever, Psalm 73:25-26(ESV) the chosen portion of my inheritance in the other world and of my cup in this; and then I will say that the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places, and that I have a beautiful inheritance. Psalm 16:5-6(ESV)
Your name and remembrance are the desire of my soul; my soul yearns for you in the night, and my spirit within me earnestly seeks you. Isaiah 26:8-9(ESV)
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God; my soul thirsts for God, for the living God, Psalm 42:1-2(ESV) who commands his steadfast love by day, and at night his song is with me; a prayer to the God of my life. Psalm 42:8(ESV)
O that I may come hungering and thirsting after righteousness, Matthew 5:6(ESV) for you fill the hungry with good things, but the rich you send away empty. Luke 1:53(ESV)
O that my soul may thirst for you, and my flesh faint for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water; that I may see your power and glory, as I have looked upon you in the sanctuary. Your steadfast love is better than life; Psalm 63:1-3(ESV) my soul will be satisfied with that as with fat and rich food, and then my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. Psalm 63:5(ESV)

The site is called Matthew Henry’s Method of Prayer. Click on here and sign up for your daily email and begin personally praying the Scriptures back to God. You will find these prayers a great encouragement to your abiding in Christ!

Ten Questions to Ask at a Christmas Gathering

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Don Whitney of The Center for Biblical Christianity has served well the church of Jesus Christ in recent years through a ministry of ten question downloads for various occasions and events. We will have the version for going into the New Year as a bulletin insert on Dec. 27.

Here is another helpful list for making meaningful conversation at a Christmas gathering:

Many of us struggle to make conversation at Christmas gatherings, whether church events, work-related parties, neighborhood drop-ins, or annual family occasions. Sometimes our difficulty lies in having to chat with people we rarely see or have never met. At other times we simply don’t know what to say to those with whom we feel little in common. Moreover, as Christians we want to take advantage of the special opportunities provided by the Christmas season to share our faith, but are often unsure how to begin. Here’s a list of questions designed not only to kindle a conversation in almost any Christmas situation, but also to take the dialogue gradually to a deeper level. Use them in a private conversation or as a group exercise, with believers or unbelievers, with strangers or with family.

  1. What’s the best thing that’s happened to you since last Christmas?
  2. What was your best Christmas ever? Why?
  3. What’s the most meaningful Christmas gift you’ve ever received?
  4. What was the most appreciated Christmas gift you’ve ever given?
  5. What was your favorite Christmas tradition as a child?
  6. What is your favorite Christmas tradition now?
  7. What do you do to try to keep Christ in Christmas?
  8. Why do you think people started celebrating the birth of Jesus?
  9. Do you think the birth of Jesus deserves such a nearly worldwide celebration?
  10. Why do you think Jesus came to earth?

 Of course, remember to pray before your Christmas gatherings. Ask the Lord to grant you “divine appointments,” to guide your conversations, and to open doors for the gospel. May He use you to bring glory to Christ this Christmas.

What Is a Silent Communion?

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This Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Advent, will see us engage in a silent communion  during the 9:30 hour in the SDA sanctuary. Some of you may never have participated in such an experience. A silent communion is a self-directed exercise in reflection, devotion, and worship centering on the Lord’s Table conducted in silence (only background instrumental music will be heard). Upon arriving in the sanctuary (please do all you can to be prompt as we make use of every minute of the hour) you will receive a guide describing the four movements of the communion.

The first movement from 9:30 to 9:45 AM concentrates on adoration and praise. Using Psalm 145 as our guide we will worship the Lord in the silence of our hearts for His various attributes and acts.

The second movement from 9:45 to 10:00 AM calls us to a focused time of confession of sin and repentance before God. We will utilize the Puritan prayer entitled Purification for this purpose. Here is how that prayer begins:

Lord Jesus, I sin. Grant that I may never cease grieving because of it, never be content with myself, never think I can reach a point of perfection. Kill my envy, command my tongue, trample down self. Give me grace to be holy, kind, gentle, pure, peaceable, to live for Thee and not for self, to copy Thy words, acts, spirit, to be transformed into Thy likeness, to be consecrated wholly to Thee, to live entirely to Thy glory.

The third movement from 10:00 to 10:15 AM brings us to the actual supper. After reflecting on three paragraphs of our confession of faith, we will approach the table and serve ourselves the bread and cup. Here are those paragraphs if you wish to do extra preparation in advance:

Paragraph One: The Lord’s supper was instituted by the Lord on the same night in which He was betrayed. It is to be observed in His churches to the world’s end, for a perpetual remembrance of Him and to show forth the sacrifice of Himself in His death. It was instituted also to confirm saints in the belief that all the benefits stemming from Christ’s sacrifice belong to them. Furthermore, it is meant to promote their spiritual nourishment and growth in Christ, and to strengthen the ties that bind them to all the duties they owe to Him. The Lord’s supper is also a bond and pledge of the fellowship which believers have with Christ and with one another. See 1 Corinthians 10:16, 17, 21; 1 Corinthians 11:23-36.

Paragraph Seven: Those who, as worthy participants, outwardly eat and drink the visible bread and wine in this ordinance, at the same time receive and feed upon Christ crucified, and receive all the benefits accruing from His death. This they do really and indeed, not as if feeding upon the actual flesh and blood of a person’s body, but inwardly and by faith. In the supper the body and blood of Christ are present to the faith of believers, not in any actual physical way, but in a way of spiritual apprehension, just as the bread and wine themselves are present to their outward physical senses. See 1 Corinthians 10:16; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.

Paragraph Eight: All persons who participate at the Lord’s table unworthily sin against the body and blood of the Lord, and their eating and drinking brings them under divine judgment. It follows,therefore, that all ignorant and ungodly persons, being unfit to enjoy fellowship with Christ, are similarly unworthy to be communicants at the Lord’s table; and while they remain as they are they cannot rightly be admitted to partake of Christ’s holy ordinance, for thereby great sin against Christ would be committed. See Matthew 7:6; 1 Corinthians 11:29; 2 Corinthians 6:14-15.

The fourth movement from 10:15 to 10:30 AM puts the church directory before us and calls us to a time of petition and intercession for one another’s needs as God brings them to mind.

I urge all of us to  make this additional observance of Communion in the month of December as a means of grace that brings even more blessing into our lives during this Advent season.