Josh King

Be Men of Story and Proposition

Story and proposition are not two antithetical approaches to reading the Scriptures; they are the way to read the Scriptures. Without story the proposition “God is faithful” is just a bone with no flesh. You can see it sure enough, but it does not come alive with meaning and depth as when you see God faithfulness displayed with the patriarchs. Without propositions story becomes a puddle of flesh. We become the story’s interpreter, able to form it as we wish. It becomes a story by us, about us. Be true theologians, be men of flesh and bone.

Jesus became flesh and bone to put God’s glory on display. Because of Him we know what it means that God is gracious, God is forgiving, God is just, God is righteous, and so much more. Take away the story and the proposition “justification by faith” has no basis. Take away the proposition “justification by faith” and we misinterpret the story.

Be true theologians, be men of flesh and bone. Be men of proposition and story.

In Christ Alone (16th and 21st Century Version)

One of my favorite modern hymns is In Christ Alone by Keith Getty. I started reading Sinclair Ferguson’s book by the same title and it opens with his translation of a passage in Calvin’s Institutes that ministered to me. I would encourage you to read both the song and the passage slowly and several times, meditate on Christ – look nowhere else.

(21st Century Version)

In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev’ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.

– Keith Getty and Stuart Townend

(16th Century Version)

When we see salvation whole,
its every single part
is found in Christ,
And so we must beware
lest we derive the smallest drop
from somewhere else.

For if we seek salvation, the very name of Jesus
teaches us
that he possesses it.

If other Spirit-given gifts are sought–
in his anointing they are found;
strength–in his reign;
and purity–in his conception;
and tenderness–expressed in his nativity,
in which in all respects like us he was,
that he might learn to feel our pain:

Redemption when we seek it, is in his passion found;
acquiital–in his condemnation lies;
and freedom from the curse–in his own cross is given.

If satisfaction for our sins we seek–we’ll find it in his sacrifice;
and cleansing in his blood.
If reconciliation now we need, for this he entered Hades,
To overcome our sins we need to know
that in his tomb they’re laid.
Then newness of our life–his resurrection brings
and immortality as well comes also with that gift.

And if we also long to find
inheritance in heaven’s reign,
his entry there secures it now
with our protection, safety, too, and blessings that abound
–all flowing from his royal throne.

The sum of all this:
For those who seek
this treasure-trove of blessings of all kinds,
in no one else can they be found
than him,
for all are given
in Christ alone.

– John Calvin (Translated by Sinclair Ferguson in In Christ Alone)

The Doctor: The Glory of God and the Souls of Men

On Romans 9:1-3:

[W]hat we have here in these two great and mighty men of God, Moses and the Apostle Paul, is such an intense concern for the glory of God and for the souls of men that the feel it to the extent, that they come nearest of all to that mind which was in Christ Jesus when he gave himself as an offering for sin that others might be saved. It is difficult for us to understand this, is it not? The famous old commentator Bengal said, ‘It is not easy to estimate the measure of love in a Moses and a Paul, for our reason does not grasp it, as a child cannot grasp the courage of warriors.’ These men so knew something about the burden of souls, that they were capable of using expressions that fill us with a sense of astonishment and amazement – expressions which have often led lesser minds to criticize them and to misunderstand them. – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 9, p. 22

Genesis 30:25-43 7 The Blessed Invitation to Get in the Way

Laban tries to manipulate God, Jacob tries to “help” God. Both actions are futile, both are God-belittling.

Have you ever contemplated manipulating the sun? When you are sick of winter do you think of moving the sun so that spring begins a bit earlier? Or do you wish your geographical setting more temperate, tropical, arid, or frigid? Do you desire to harness the suns energy and use it as you desire? Is it your ambition to catch, harness, manipulate, contain, direct, and tame the sun?

Or have you ever thought about helping the sun? “You know its life span is so short, I really must help it out, go visit it and throw a few logs on the fire as it seems to be running low on fuel. Here Mr. Sun, let me give you my flashlight, now you will shine much brighter and longer, now people will notice you.”

Such thoughts are absurd. If someone were really to have them we would think of committing them. Such thoughts are insane. If such thoughts are to be dubbed insane concerning the sun, what word could we possibly use to describe the foolishness of manipulating or “helping” God? The sun is small compared to our God. Infinitely smaller. He is the God who made sheets of suns.

Yet we try to manipulate Him. Spiritual gurus who share their seven steps to an abundantly blessed life are really just telling you that they have found the secret way to rub the lamp, tickling the genie so that he will give you all your wishes. Christ and His crucifixion do not bring you into blessing, rather it is these seven steps. God is still the ticket, but He is no longer the main attraction. “God I’m living by these rules, you owe me a blessed, happy, healthy life now – that is why I ask ‘why?’”

Seeming much more pious some of us are dedicated to serving God. Beware, there is a way to belittle God by serving Him that makes Him look just as foolish (Acts 17:24-25). God does not need our programs. He does not need our intelligence. He does not need our charisma. He does not need our gifts, He gives them. We are always the recipients, more so when we serve, not less (1 Corinthians 15:10. God has no lack and we supply no need. He could work much more efficiently without us. Rather as a dad he invites us into His work so that we may gain.

So denounce trying to manipulate your heavenly Father for worldly pleasure and realize you help him like a toddler helps his dad repair the car. Because of His love towards you He invites you to get in His way, get caught up in His greatness, look like Him, and be filled with the joy of working with and being with Him.

The Doctor: Peace by Ridicule

Next we must look at this phrase ‘more than conquerors’. Not only says the Apostle, shall nothing separate us from His love to us; in all these things which try to separate us we are ‘more than conquerors’ with respect to them. This is what he is particularly concerned to emphasize. In every case his argument has been reductio ad absurdum. He is not content merely answering objections, he ridicules them; and he does it here. – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 8, p. 444

Genesis 29:31-30:24 & From Sludge to Soil

If Jacobs’s home life growing up in his parents’ home would have made Dr. Phil, the home under his own authority would have made Jerry Springer.

I grew up with two sisters, that was painful enough (love you Kim and Kris); I cannot imagine being married to two sisters. Here a war rages between the two of them and they use their children as the ammunition. What an excellent picture of motherhood. Have you ever heard a Mother’s Day sermon from our text? They have their idols and they are worshipping them. Babies function as just false saviors to save them from their false hell and deliver them to their false heaven. But the gods are angry, they do not satisfy, they don’t deliver, they don’t save.

Leah’s problem is not that she desires the wrong thing, but that she desires wrongly. She doesn’t simply desire her husband’s love, she worships it. Babies and God himself are just stepping stones to her true desire.

Rachel, like Jacob, as the younger wants to trump the older sibling. She gives us the classic phrase for idolatry diagnostics, “Give me ______ or I shall die!” She doesn’t have a pure desire for children, she just hates being in second place.

The issue here is not even the intensity of the desire. Sorrow and joy are not exclusive of one another (2 Corinthians 6:10). If you would counsel Rachel and Leah simply by saying, “rejoice in the Lord”, this is too simplistic. Sometimes the more joyful you are in the Lord the deeper your sorrow. For instance, the more satisfying I find God to be the more burdened I will become for the unreached peoples of the earth. Today if Leah could read Ephesians and see what marriage is supposed to portray it would not decrease her desire for her husband, it would heighten and sanctify it. Her desire for her husband is not tempered and purified by a white hot, holy, and greater desire for the only water that can satisfy.

Jacob’s character fairs no better in this passage. The women speak and know of Yahweh so evidently some spiritual leadership is being exercised, but he fails pathetically in resolving and squelching this conflict. The one time he speaks is in anger, and, as typical with dudes, it’s not so much what he says but how he says it. Ultimately Jacob is dismally reduced to the status of a stud. No, not stud in a juvenile cool sense. He is pimped out by one wife to another for some “love apples”. Jacob has simply become a male used for mating and breeding purposes.

And yet, from all this mess we discover that God again is working behind the curtain of this Jerry Springer drama to bless them and bring about His covenant purposes. As Dale Ralph Davis wrote, “The chemistry of divine providence takes the crud and confusion of our doings and makes it the soil that produces the fruit of His faithfulness.” Their sins don’t thwart His plans they accomplish them. For two generations the family that is to become a nation has only been multiplying by one, but now, in the mist of this chaos, a nation is being formed. Sound familiar, holy blessed creation out of chaos, blessing over curse? God at the same time is disciplining them and forming the nation. Blessing and discipline surely are not antonyms, but synonyms.

Tolle Lege: The Gospel-Driven Life

Readability: 3

Length: 266 pgs

Author: Michael Horton

In Christless Christianity Michael Horton wrote concerning the alternative gospel of the American church, in his sequel, The Gospel Driven-Life, he writes concerning the true gospel, the gospel by which we live – every day. The first concerns the crisis, the second the solution.

Christianity lives in proportion to its understanding of the gospel. Block out the light of the gospel and the plant withers. American Christianity may seem like a mighty oak from the outside, but with the Son eclipsed she rots from the inside out. The gospel is not simply how we begin the Christian life, it is not a jumpstart. As Tullian Tchividjian said in his endorsement of this book, “the gospel doesn’t just ignite the Christian life; it’s the fuel that keeps Christians going every day.”

This book is full of life-giving light, the light of the gospel, the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4-6). We have no other message, why would you want one?

The book is divided into two sections. In the first Horton reminds us in vivid language of the best good news. The gospel comes to us as news, it is not about what we do; it’s about what has been done for us. In the next section he describes the kind of community that the gospel creates.

Preparing this post has made me want to reread the book very soon. I hope you will be intrigued such that you wish to read the book twice before having read it once.

The Bible is not a collection of timeless principles offering a gentle thought for the day. It is not a resource for our self-improvement. Rather, it is a dramatic story that unfolds from promise to fulfillment, with Christ at the center. Its focus is God and his action. God is not a supporting actor in our drama; it is the other way around. God does not exist to make sure that we are happy and fulfilled. Rather, we exist to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. God is not a facilitator of our ‘life transformation’ projects. He is not a life coach. Rather, he is our Creator, Lawgiver, Judge, and Covenant Lord.

Our real crisis is the righteousness of God, but the solution is the righteousness from God that is a free gift.

God outloves our hatred!

We not only have to get the gospel out; we have to get it right.

The riches of this estate that believers inherit are so vast that the will must be proclaimed every week. Christ’s attorney must read and expound the will in sections over a lifetime. Not just once, but every day we must renounce our trust in other would-be lords, saviors, providers and promise makers. We must let go of our anxious grip on our own lives, our sense of being in control, our own integrity and confidence in our religious experience. We must renounce the contracts we have entered that promised to make our life meaningful and say ‘Amen!’ to the will as it is read to us.

It is often said that we must apply the Scriptures to daily living. But this is to invoke the Bible too late, as if we already knew what ‘life’ or ‘daily living’ meant. The problem is not merely that we lack the right answers, but that we don’t even have the right questions until God introduces us to his interpretation of reality.

The more we hear and understand concerning the gospel, the more our faith grows and strengthens. Nevertheless, the weakest faith clings to a sufficient Savior. Faith itself does not save us from judgment any more than the quality of one’s confidence in the lifeguard is responsible for being rescued from drowning. It is the rescuer not the one rescued, who saves. In fact, it is in the very act of rescuing that a victim finds himself or herself clinging to the rescuer in confidence. I have yet to see a headline like, “Drowning Victim Rescued by Superior Clinging.” It is always the lifeguard who is credited with the rescue. It is on account of Christ that we are justified, through faith, and not on account of our faith itself.

In that wonderful yet often painful process of becoming part of Christ’s body we still want to make the news ourselves, but instead find ourselves being incorporated into the news of Christ’s doing, dying, rising, and ruling. As we suffer the death of our cherished inmost self – that little devil – we become alive really for the first time.

When it comes to our standing before God we need a report not a resource.

The Doctor: God Does Not Need Our Defense

How pathetic and hopeless is the position of people who think that they safeguard the love of God by denying the substitutionary theory of the atonement, who say that our Lord did not cry out in an agony, and who imagine that the measure of the love of God is that God says, ‘Though you have killed my only Son, I still love you, and am still ready to forgive you’! They believe that they safeguard and magnify the love of God by denying the truth concerning the wrath of God, and that God must and does punish sin. I hope I have shown what they actually do is to detract from the love of God. The love of God is only truly seen when we realize that ‘He spared not his own son”… – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 8, p. 396

Genesis 29:1-30 & Covenant over Circumstances

Because of sin our ears are broken such that we more easily hear a whispered lie than shouted truth. We look to circumstances and not covenant as the gauge of God’s love. Our car rather than the cross tells us of God’s love. The car breaks down , the whisper “He doesn’t love you” is heard, and our heart cries, “why?”

The “biggest” word in this whole narrative is the first one, “Then…”. This takes us back to the divine encounter in chapter 28. “Then” has not only chronological, but also theological significance for God has just promised to be with Jacob and keep him wherever he goes (Genesis 28:15). This means that everything in this narrative, both halves of it, are expressions of God’s love and covenant faithfulness; both the first half in which everything delightfully seems to be falling into place, and the second half where everything in God’s discipline is seemingly falling apart. In fact the second half is saturated with more of God’s love than the second. God will sovereignly use a sinner to sanctify His saint, and He is loving in doing so.

If you are in Christ, God’s only stance towards you is love. It is wild, radical, uncompromising, unfailing love, but it is love. It will tolerate no toxic sin in you. His discipline is an expression of His love, not His wrath. Do not despise His discipline, esteem it (Hebrews 12:5-11). It is not pleasant in itself, but one day the night of chastening will end, and the morning will dawn with you discovering that you look a little more like God for He disciplines us unto holiness, and holiness is the greater happiness. Oh how good it is for us to be afflicted (Psalm 119:67, 71, 75)!

How is it that nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8:31-39)? Jesus also, more than Jacob, relentlessly and joyfully pursued a bride. In His quest for her he deals not simply with some wily Laban. Sure Satan is the accuser of our souls, but he is not the owner. He will be defeated, not paid in this transaction. If Jesus simply had to pay Satan the cost might be cheap. Oh, what Christ would pay for His bride! God must purchase us… from Himself. We stand under His wrath, and He would have us stand under His love and He will compromise none of Himself in order to transport us (Romans 3:24-26). Justice must be satisfied, His glory manifested, His name honored. No mere 7 years of labor, but the wrath of God was suffered on the cross for this bride.

May you hear the shouts of God’s covenant love over the whispers of circumstances.

Hymns I’m Angry I Didn’t Learn as a Child (13)

Here is a hymn to go with our upcomming study of 2 Timothy at The Still. Read 2 Timothy a couple of times and then read the hymn again. Convicted? I was.

Am I a Soldier of the Cross?

By Isaac Watts

Am I a soldier of the cross,

A follower of the Lamb,

And shall I fear to own His cause,

Or blush to speak His Name?

Must I be carried to the skies

On flowery beds of ease,

While others fought to win the prize,

And sailed through bloody seas?

Are there no foes for me to face?

Must I not stem the flood?

Is this vile world a friend to grace,

To help me on to God?

Sure I must fight if I would reign;

Increase my courage, Lord.

I’ll bear the toil, endure the pain,

Supported by Thy Word.

Thy saints in all this glorious war

Shall conquer, though they die;

They see the triumph from afar,

By faith’s discerning eye.

When that illustrious day shall rise,

And all Thy armies shine

In robes of victory through the skies,

The glory shall be Thine