I want to quote a sentence to you from a man who was about as far removed from being an Evangelical Christian as anyone could be, but he was a great thinker and an acute observer – the late Dean Inge. He has produced a little book on Protestantism; it was one of a series. I will never forget the first sentence in that book, it was so true. He put it all in one phrase; he said: ‘Every institution tends to produce its opposite’. Now that is a very profound remark. It is a very perfect summary of the very thing I am trying to say here. He was writing on Protestantism, and what he was able to show so cleverly, and which I want to repeat is this: that by today Protestantism has become almost the exact opposite of what it was at its beginning in the sixteenth century.
Why does such a thing happen? It occurs as a result of the struggle between the spirit and the form. I do not think there is a greater struggle than this. The spirit must always have a form and that is why you have such a thing as the Christian church. An idea must always take form if it is to be of any value. But there is always a tension between these two. Certain dangers arise, and the biggest danger of all is that the form tends to cripple the spirit. I do not think you can begin to understand church history, you cannot understand the Bible, unless you have got clear in your mind this struggle and tension between form and spirit. – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 11, p. 150
Author: Josh King
Genesis 46:31-47:27 & The Wisdom Above All Wisdoms
We can divide the passage easily into two chunks demonstrating the wisdom of Jacob indifferent spheres. In 46:31-47:12 we see His wisdom in getting his family settled in Goshen, then in 47:13-27 we see his wisdom in ruling for Jacob. But this is only a way of dividing up the narrative; it is not the point of the narrative. Joseph has received a wisdom from above, but his is not the wisdom above all wisdoms.
When at the end of the text we are told how Israel has settled, gained possessions, and multiplied, you are not to be in awe of the wisdom of Joseph, but the wisdom and providence of God. God promised Jacob that He would make Him a great nation in Egypt (Genesis 46:4), here we see Him doing that. While the Egyptians struggle through the famine spending all their money then selling their cattle, land, and lives, God provides for His people, multiplies them, and forms them into a nation.
A couple of reflections are in order.
First, don’t adore the gift more than the giver. Any wisdom Joseph has is only the faintest echo of God’s. Lightning bugs are amazing creatures, but it’s a fool that celebrates their rear as being as brighter as the sun.
Second. the wisdom of God, like all of His other attributes, is for His covenant people. All of God is for us. This means no enemy is so smart that He can thwart His plans, nor are any of His children so foolish that they can clumsily demolish them.
Revel in this wisdom of God for you as Paul when He wrote,
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
‘For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?’
‘Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. – Romans 11:33-36
God Has a Plan for You…
Sure, but that is not the gospel. God had a plan for Pharaoh, but it wasn’t good news. Don’t invite people to come to our Lord Jesus Christ because God has a wonderful plan for them.
The good news is not you can, but he has.
The good news of the gospel is not your potentiality, but Christ’s accomplishment.
The Doctor: Wrong Problem – Wrong Appeals
[M]an’s only need ultimately is to be reconciled to God. Nothing else. You see if you start with man and man’s needs you find that there are a large number of people who are not interested in your evangelism. They say, ‘But I never do that, I have not been guilty of that sin’. Highly moral, intellectual people, living a good life and trying to help others, sitting in their self-contained homes – they do not see any need of coming to Christ. There is only one way to show that everybody needs Christ, and that is to hold them face to face with God. …You see it affects, of necessity, our whole approach to the unbeliever, the whole matter of evangelism. And so you get wrong appeals. You actually get evangelists sometimes saying, ‘Come! God needs you’. Have you not heard that? It is quite common. Or it is put in the form of the benefits of salvation. “How foolish you are. Come! If you only came this is what you would get’ – and so the things are put before them. And of course when you get to the point of pressure being brought being brought to bear upon people to make an immediate decision, it is still further wrong. – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 11, p. 129
Genesis 46:1-30 & From Nothing to Nation
For approximately 22 years Jacob has presumed his favorite son to be dead. Now he has learned he is alive; can you imagine his exuberant expectation? Joseph was 17 when he saw him last, he will be around 40 when he soon sees him again. God comes and makes many wonderful promises to Jacob at Beersheba, and then ends them with a tender personal promise that he will die peacefully with his firstborn closing his eyes. So they loaded up the wagons to move to Egypt and… genealogy!
Is this the worst commercial break ever? If this was on the TV and non-inspired you might throw something at it. We should have known that we couldn’t make it through Genesis without one more genealogy. I hope our study through Genesis has caused you to see the stunning beauty and perfection of Scripture in all its parts. I hope you no longer come to genealogies and sigh outwardly with disgust, but inwardly with delight. I hope you have seen how packed they are with theological meaning. So what is God communicating? Why this list of descendants and why here?
Although Moses does write in such a way that we anticipate the reunion of Jacob and Joseph, and although that reunion communicates to us much about our heavenly Father, that is not the main agenda of this text. This is not simply a sappy sentimental story, but a thick theological tale. God is going with Israel into Egypt, there He will make Israel into a great nation, and He will bring them out again. As Bruce Waltke comments, “Egypt is the womb God will use to form His nation.”
From old Abraham and barren Sarah a nation will come. From these seventy, God will make a nation. Remember Moses wrote Genesis as part of a series called the Pentateuch. Check out how the next volume begins.
These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. – Exodus 1:1-7
Prior to Jacob the covenant family had only been multiplying by one. Not the quick route from family to nation. With Jacob the fertility level gets kicked up, but seventy is hardly a nation. But in Egypt, God will form His people.
Some may infer from Exodus 2:24-25 that God had forgotten His covenant. But the Exodus passage speaks specifically about remembering the part of the covenaant regarding bringing them back to the land. God has not forgotten or delayed on His promises during the 400 plus years that Israel will be in bondage in Egypt. Everything is going according to plan (Genesis 15:13-14). God is making His people from nothing in faithfulness to His covenant.
For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. – Deuteronomy 7:6-8
In faithfulness to His covenant God is still making His people from such nothing today.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. – 1 Peter 29-10
Out of nothing, creation; good, holy, and blest. Only Elohim can do this.
Tolle Lege: The Masculine Mandate
Readability: 1
Length: 154 pgs
Author: Richard Phillips
Don’t think that The Masculine Mandate comes from the desk of some effeminate, overeducated minister trying to make a female dominated religion easier to swallow. Before surrendering to the ministry Richard Phillips served as a tank officer in the Army and then taught at West Point finally retiring as a major. At the same time don’t expect more of the same. Don’t expect more Wild at Heart salve for your wounded man-soul. This is Biblical manhood at its clearest. Men, buy this book, and then strive to live by the mandate it shows you in Scripture. What is this mandate? You’ll find it in Genesis 2:15; men were made to work and keep.
At this point, I have the unpleasant duty of correcting some erroneous teaching that has gained prominence in recent years. Since its publication in 2001, the top Christian book on manhood has been John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart. This book has become practically a cottage industry, complete with supporting videos, workbooks, and even a “Field Manual.” In my opinion, Wild at Heart gained traction with Christian men in large part because it calls us to stop being sissies, to cease trying to get in touch with our “feminine side” (mine is named Sharon), and instead to embark on an exciting quest to discover our male identity. I can add my hearty “Amen!” to the idea that Christian men should reject a feminized idea of manhood. The problem is that the basic approach to masculinity presented in Wild at Heart is almost precisely opposite from what is really taught in the Bible. For this reason, this book has, in my opinion, sown much confusion among men seeking a truly biblical sense of masculinity.
We encounter major errors in Wild at Heart right at the beginning, where Eldredge discusses Genesis 2:8: “Eve was created within the lush beauty of Eden’s garden. But Adam, if you’ll remember, was created outside the garden, in the wilderness.” Eldredge reasons here that if God “put the man” into the garden, he must have been made outside the garden. While the Bible does not actually say this, it’s plausible. But even assuming it’s true, what are we to make of it? Eldredge makes an unnecessary and most unhelpful leap of logic, concluding that the “core of a man’s heart is undomesticated,” and because we are “wild at heart,” our souls must belong in the wilderness and not in the cultivated garden. That is, Eldredge assumes and then teaches as a point of doctrine a view of manhood that Scripture simply does not support.
It’s easy to understand how this teaching has appealed to men who labor in office buildings or feel imprisoned by the obligations of marriage, parenthood, and civilized society. But there is one thing Eldredge does not notice. God put the man in the garden. The point of Wild at Heart is that a man finds his identity outside the garden in wilderness quests. In contrast, the point of Genesis 2:8 is that God has put the man into the garden, into the world of covenantal relationships and duties, in order to gain and act out his God-given identity there. If God intends men to be wild at heart, how strange that he placed man in the garden, where his life would be shaped not by self-centered identity quests but by covenantal bonds and blessings.
To work it and keep it: here is the how of biblical masculinity, the mandate of Scripture for males. It is my mandate in this book, therefore, to seek to specify, clarify, elaborate, and apply these two verbs to the glorious, God-given, lifelong project of masculine living:
Work. To work is to labor to make things grow. In subsequent chapters I will discuss work in terms of nurturing, cultivating, tending, building up, guiding, and ruling.
Keep. To keep is to protect and to sustain progress already achieved. Later I will speak of it as guarding, keeping safe, watching over, caring for, and maintaining.
Genesis 45 & How Providence Relates to Forgiveness and Guilt
Finally Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, and in so doing reveals God to them. The revelation they and we receive of God here casts light over the whole Joseph narrative. The Reformation Study Bible comments on Genesis 45:5-8, “These verses, with Joseph’s repeated affirmation ‘God sent me’ form the theological heart of the Joseph narrative.”
Joseph tells his brothers not to be distressed or angry with themselves about their sin. How can they possibly not be angry with themselves? They are repentant, they have sinned horribly; they surely messed everything up by such hideous sin right? Yes, they should repent of their horrible sin, but no, their sin isn’t as big as God’s sovereignty. They didn’t ruin God’s plan by their sin, they accomplished it. Ultimately it is not the brother’s hatred that sends Joseph into Egypt, but God’s love; God’s covenant love for Joseph and his brothers. It is not the brother’s jealously of Joseph that determines the plot of Genesis but God’s jealousy for His glory.
Because they are secondary causes at best, Joseph can forgive; indeed he must forgive, for if he is ultimately to have a beef with anyone, it must be God. Because they are secondary causes, the repentant brothers can rest in Joseph’s and God’s forgivingness.
Learn to apply God’s providence from both angles here. When sinned against know that no human being’s sin against you is bigger than God’s plan for you. When you are the one who sins, the role we much more often play, don’t be so arrogant to think that your rebellion to squelch God’s plan will actually succeed and bring down the kingdom.
Tolle Lege: A Call to Spiritual Reformation
Readability: 2
Length: 226 pgs
Author: D.A. Carson
D.A. Carson’s A Call to Spiritual Reformation is currently my favorite book on prayer. In fact it is probably my favorite Carson book. It is one of my favorite books ever!
The book is composed of a series of sermons surveying Paul’s prayers in his epistles. I have heard Cason and others testify that God greatly blessed these messages when they were originally delivered and a marked difference in power was measured from those days. I certainly can testify that as I read the book I was deeply convicted, taught, and had sweet communion with God. God has used these sermons to impact my prayer life, I am certain He will use them to impact yours.
Do you not sense, with me, the severity of the problem? Granted that most of us know some individuals who are remarkable prayer warriors, is it not nevertheless true that by and large we are better at organizing than agonizing? Better at administering than interceding? Better at fellowship than fasting? Better at entertainment than worship? Better at theological articulation than spiritual adoration? Better—God help us!—at preaching than at praying?
What is wrong? Is not this sad state of affairs some sort of index of our knowledge of God? Shall we not agree with J.I. Packer when he writes, ‘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’? Can we profitably meet the other challenges that confront the Western church if prayer is ignored as much as it has been?
Tolle Lege: A Sweet and Bitter Providence
Readability: 1
Length: 154 pgs
Author: John Piper
This is a readable little book about Ruth dealing predominantly with the theme of providence. While A Sweet and Bitter Providence is not my favorite book on Ruth, nor one of my favorite Piper books, it is full of good, solid, digestible truth. Here are a few tidbits.
Is God’s bitter providence the last word? Are bitter ingredients (like vanilla extract) put in the mixer to make the cake taste bad?
Knowing how this book ends gives us a sense, as we begin, that nothing will be insignificant here.
Seek refuge under the wings of God, even when they seem to cast only shadows, and at just the right time God will let you look out from his Eagle’s nest onto some spectacular sunrise.
A follower of Christ in any ethnic group is a closer relative to us than any blood relativewho rejects our Savior.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rObFF1dsi2U]
The Doctor: Don’t Tie Joy to Power in Ministry
Martyn Lloyd-Jones was one of the most influential preachers of the century. A few weeks before he died, someone asked him how, after decades of fruitful ministry and extraordinary activity, he was coping now he was suffering such serious weakness it took much of his energy to move from his bed to his armchair and back. He replied in the words of Luke 10:20: ‘Do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’ In other words, do not tie your joy, your sense of wellbeing, to power in ministry. Your ministry can be taken from you. Tie your joy to the fact that you are known and loved by God; tie it to your salvation; tie it to the sublime truth that your name is written in heaven. That can never be taken from you. Lloyd-Jones added: ‘I am perfectly content.’ – From A Call to Spiritual Reformation by D.A. Carson
No Other Boast 