Evangelism really comes down to this: do you delight in Jesus?
The Sunday Preachin’ January 29
How To Give Jesus
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Monthly Archives: January 2012
This Week’s Fighter Verse
You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
(Jesus, Matthew 5:13-16, ESV)
God, Manhood, and Ministry
I am really excited to spend the next two and a half days with my son Colton on our annual trek to the Desiring God Conference for Pastors. Looks like a great one this year. We would appreciate your prayers for us, and the 1,000+ pastors that will be there.
It will likely be quiet around this blog until later in the week.
Apologetics
(HT:JT)
Luke Series Is Coming…
Blessed Be The LORD
A psalm of Solomon.
Give your love of justice to the king, O God, and righteousness to the king’s son. Help him judge your people in the right way; let the poor always be treated fairly. May the mountains yield prosperity for all, and may the hills be fruitful. Help him to defend the poor, to rescue the children of the needy, and to crush their oppressors. May they fear you as long as the sun shines, as long as the moon remains in the sky. Yes, forever!
May the king’s rule be refreshing like spring rain on freshly cut grass, like the showers that water the earth. May all the godly flourish during his reign. May there be abundant prosperity until the moon is no more. May he reign from sea to sea, and from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth. Desert nomads will bow before him; his enemies will fall before him in the dust. The western kings of Tarshish and other distant lands will bring him tribute. The eastern kings of Sheba and Seba will bring him gifts. All kings will bow before him, and all nations will serve him.
He will rescue the poor when they cry to him; he will help the oppressed, who have no one to defend them. He feels pity for the weak and the needy, and he will rescue them. He will redeem them from oppression and violence, for their lives are precious to him.
Long live the king! May the gold of Sheba be given to him. May the people always pray for him and bless him all day long. May there be abundant grain throughout the land, flourishing even on the hilltops. May the fruit trees flourish like the trees of Lebanon, and may the people thrive like grass in a field. May the king’s name endure forever; may it continue as long as the sun shines. May all nations be blessed through him and bring him praise.
Praise the LORD God, the God of Israel, who alone does such wonderful things. Praise his glorious name forever! Let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and amen!
(This ends the prayers of David son of Jesse.)
Like this:
King Kulture
A great video from Humble Beast records:
Being Good
Even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting on his own steam – he is only nourishing or protecting a life he could never have acquired by his own efforts. And that has practical consequences. As long as the natural life is in your body, it will do a lot towards repairing that body. Cut it, and up to a point it will heal, as a dead body would not.
A live body is not one that never gets hurt, but one that can to some extent repair itself. In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble – because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ himself carried out.
That is why the Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or – if they think there is not – at least they hope to deserve approval from good men.
But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because he loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.
~ from Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis.
Like this:
Cling To The Cross
Odd Thomas giving some seriously legit spoken word on the Gospel:
Check out an interview with Shai and Blair Linne about the artistic genre of Spoken Word.
(HT: JT)
Glory Is Not The Whole Story
I was having a conversation with a friend last week about the glory of God and the message of the Gospel. He said something intriguing to me, especially given the “camp” that I hail from and generally hang around. Namely, if all we tell people is about the glory of God, then we aren’t telling them the whole story.
When asked what he meant, he explained, “The truth that God does is good and great and all-powerful and holy, and that he does everything for his Glory is absolutely right, and should be proclaimed. That I fall short of that is also true. But if we leave people there, we’ve failed to tell the whole story. We also need to tell them that God loves them, and has saved them, and that, in Jesus, they have absolutely everything that they need.”
In other words, when we say that God’s saving of us is about his glory, don’t forget the “us.” God saved me! God saved you! He did it for his glory, and he did it for our joy.
I was reminded of this conversation while reading the account of God saving his people by splitting the Red Sea. This story of great power is found in Exodus 14. By way of reminder, the people of God have just been rescued from Pharoah as a result of God’s great exhibition of power through ten disastrous plagues. They are marching away from Egypt. And, as they do, God gives Moses a heads-up: the trouble isn’t over yet.
“Moses, before it gets better, it is going to get a little worse. I am going to harden Pharaoh’s heart again. I am going to make him chase y’all down. And here is the reason I am going to do this – I will get glory in this. By conquering Pharaoh, and all his army, they, and all the nations that hear about it, will know that I am the LORD.”
I find it very interesting that God gives Moses this heads up. He tells him before the trouble, that trouble is coming. But he also essentially let’s Moses know that they don’t need to fret about it, because God is going to get glory by bringing the Egyptians for the purpose of routing them.
This kind of reminds me how God’s other mediator with his people – his Son Jesus – used to talk when he was here. He promised that we would have trouble in this world. He gave us a heads up. But when he did, he also said things like, “Don’t fear, for I have overcome the world!” And, don’t worry, for “I will never leave you or forsake you.” But I digress…
Well, as you know, the Israelites had trouble believing God on this one, despite all the signs they had already seen. They “feared greatly,” and they “cried out to the LORD.” (14:10) And then they proceeded to complain that God had ever brought them out of Egypt, only to be slaughtered by an enraged Egyptian ruler.
Moses, a mediator like the Great Mediator to come, proclaimed to them,
“Whoa there. Wait a minute. Remember, God gave us a heads up this was going to happen! Don’t worry. Fear not! Stand firm! See the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today! The LORD is going to fight for you. He’s got this. He will wage the battle. All you have to do is be silent and wait.” (14:13-14)
Then, the angel of the LORD and the pillar of cloud move from before God’s people, to behind them, separating them from the Egyptians. And Moses lifts up his hands, and the sea is driven back, split down the middle to make way for the people. The winds blow all night long, allowing the great procession of God’s people walk between two massive walls of water – on dry land! – escaping their enemies.
And when the morning comes, Moses lifts his hands once more, and the seas crash in, destroying Pharaoh and all his great army.
To what end?
God gets great and deserved glory as it is he and he alone who has defeated the Egyptians. All the nations shall thus know of the God of Israel.
And, that glory is all wrapped up in and connected to the salvation of people. Listen to what Moses concludes:
Thus the LORD saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the LORD used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the LORD, and they believed in the LORD and in his servant Moses. (14:30-31)
The LORD is glorious, in part, because the LORD saves his people!
What promise this story holds for us, as children of the new covenant. The GOD of the Red Sea crossing is our Father. He exhibits his great power on our behalf every day, so that we would fear him (and not people or our circumstances), and believe in him. And even better is that we live in an a new covenant age when our belief does not rest in some merely human servant like Moses, but the greater Servant that Moses prophesied would come (Deut. 18:15) – Jesus Christ, God’s Son!
In Christ, we have been delivered from our enemies. In Christ, we need not fear. In Christ, we may rejoice in the glory of God as our strength, and our song, and our salvation, who in his steadfast love has redeemed us, and will guide us safely to his holy abode!
Like this:
God’s Remedies
Clive Staples Lewis writes:
[God] selected one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was – that there was only one of Him and that He cared about right conduct. Those people were the Jews, and the Old Testament gives an account of the hammering process.
Then comes the real shock.
Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. he says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else.
And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.
~ from Mere Christianity (paragraphing mine).
Like this:
The Perfection of Beauty
After The Abortion, What?
Traveling Without a Map
This post is a conclusion to yesterday’s post, Just a Bit of Coloured Paper?
Now, Theology is like the map.
Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God – experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it.
In fact, that is just why a vague religion – all feeling about God in nature, and so on – is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work: like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map. (~ from Mere Christianity)
My dear friend, quite apart from some vague experience or feeling that so many of us so often seem to be longing for, Lewis is trying to help us see that theology is the map that leads us to God.
