Author: Josh King

Hebrews 12:1-3 & From Moons to The Eternal-Supernova

We orbit the illuminated moons of Hebrews 11:4-40 (for five weeks we have orbited!) only to be thrust toward The Eternal-Supernova Son.

Tolle Lege: The Atonement

Readability :  3

Length:  206 pp

Author:  Leon Morris

How does the Bible speak of the atonement?  What words and images does it use?  Leon Morris does an excellent service to us in this work.  Although primarily a word study Morris is always sure that his theology is Biblical as well, that is, he always lets the context and Biblical storyline determine the ultimate meaning of the word.  Many word studies are attempts to violate the clear meaning of the storyline, this is not one.  Although The Atonement is the laymen’s version of his previous work, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross, it is still a very scholarly work.  While it is readable, understand what it is, it is not simply reflections, sermons, or exhortations concerning the cross, but a deep study of the meaning of the cross.  Morris deals with images such as covenant, sacrifice, redemption, and reconciliation among others.  If ever we need push ourselves to read deep hard books, it is concerning books of this ilk, books on God’s masterpiece of atonement.

When God gave them commandments in the wilderness, the writer says, the Israelites complained.  But God replied that they were his slaves: ‘For this reason have I redeemed you, that you might give decrees and you should keep them.’  Here the thought is plainly expressed that Israel was not redeemed for the people’s own personal convenience but in order that they might be the servants of God.  The redemption from Egypt was the redemption of a community which was to be in a unique sense bound to God as the people of God.

That peace has a very different content in the Bible from that which we normally give the term is clear from some words towards the end of Romans.  The writer assured his readers that ‘The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet’ (Rom. 16:20).  God is characterized as ‘the God of peace’ by the very fact that he performs a warlike action!  This is strange language to us, but the overthrow of Satan was a necessary ingredient in peace as the men of the New Testament understood it.  So it is quite natural for one of them to speak in this way of God as the God of peace as he crushes the evil one.  What could more vividly show what ‘peace’ means?

Peace means the defeat of evil.  Peace means the breaking down the barrier between man and God.  Peace means the presence of God’s rich and abundant blessing.  Peace means positiveness; it is not the absence of anything – the barrier that separated us from God or anything else.  Peace is presence, the presence of God.  Christ ‘is our peace’.

The Necessity of Gospel Glory

I was skimming back through Jeremiah Burroughs Gospel Reconciliation the other day looking at places that I marked with a red asterisk (* = very important / powerful / good) and came across this gem.

God expects that we should have mighty high thoughts of this work [the wisdom and goodness of God in reconciling the world to Himself in Christ]; and if our thoughts are not high of this work, and are not lifted up above all creatures, we do but take the name of God in vain.  God does not care for any other glory we give Him unless we give Him the glory of this work.  It is true, when we see the works of God in the earth and on the seas, we should glorify God’s power and wisdom.  But unless your heart is taken with this masterpiece (as I may so term it), with this great work of God of reconciling Himself to the world in Christ, God will reject all your other glorifying of Him.  I mean He will so reject them as He will not accept them in comparison.

There is no other name by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12) because no other name glorifies how only God can give us God.  God gives His Son, and the Son He gives, gives us His Father.  Thus God is glorified as both the means and end of the gospel.  This is the marvelous masterpiece of reconciliation.  Revel in it, and know your heavenly Father smiles.

Tolle Lege: Knowing Scripture

Readability :  1

Length:  125 pp

Author:  R.C. Sproul

R.C.  Sproul’s little book is a great, clear, and simple explanation as to both why and how you should study the Bible.  What I always love about Dr. Sproul’s teaching is that by simple I do not mean watered down.  Although concise and easily readable, Sproul tackles big ideas and communicates them as a master teacher.  This is one of those books every child of God ought to have read because I think they will profit by reading it.  Never ignore a book that is rightly used to generate a love for the Book of books.

The preponderance of boredom that people experience with the Bible came home to me several years ago when I was hired to teach the Scriptures in required Bible courses at a Christian college.  The president of the institution phoned me and said, ‘We need someone young and exciting, someone with a dynamic method who will be able to make the Bible come alive.’  I had to force myself to swallow my words.  I wanted to say, ‘You want me to make the Bible come alive?  I didn’t know that it had died.  In fact, I never even heard that it was ill.  Who was the attending physician at the Bible’s demise?’  No, I can’t make the Bible come alive for anyone.  The Bible is already alive.  It makes me come alive.

No Christian can avoid theology.  Every Christian is a theologian.  Perhaps not a theologian in the technical sense, but a theologian nevertheless.  The issue for Christians is not whether we are going to be theologians but whether we are going to be good theologians of bad ones.  A good theologian is one who is instructed by God.

The Doctor: Is There a “But Now”?

On Romans 3:21 – [C]an there be two words which are more blessed and more wonderful to us than just these two words, ‘But now’?  To me they provide a very subtle and thorough-going test of our whole position as Christians.  Would you like to know for certain at this moment whether you are a Christian or not?  I suggest that this is one of the best tests.  As I repeat these words, ‘But now,” is there something within you that makes you say, ‘Thank God!’  Is there a ‘But now’ in your experience?  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 3, p. 26

Hebrews 11:32-40 & We Are the Lab Rats

We are the lab rats.  You know the cruel little experiment where if a rat fails to behave a specific way, say pushing a blue button instead of a red one he gets his food, but he gets shocked as well?  He keeps choosing option B over A, why?  “Why won’t he conform?”  “We will give you everything you desire if you just behave as we wish,” says the diabolical scientist that lives in his mother’s garage.  We are those rats.  To the world we are fools, we refuse their offers and are shocked, but if they had but tasted Jesus they would know our behavior the most logical of actions.  Our risk glorifies the Bread of Life, He is worth it.

I’m afraid of reading Hebrews 11:23-40 lightly, the same way that Philippians 4:13 is glibly quoted with no concern for the context.  Consider two scenarios:

Christian # 1 He lives in the States.  He has a great job and makes a sizeable income.  He attends church regularly and tithes.  He has never really suffered.  He has accomplished much.  He is easily deemed “successful” by all his friends.  They talk about how he is so blessed.  Is he?  He is materialistic and consumed with his image.  Always the best – the best clothes, the best car, the best TV.  He isn’t super extravagant, nor living above his means; he is just wanting to invest in good quality he will tell you – you know, being a good steward and all.   And yes, of course, he gives all the glory to God!

Christian # 2 Lives in a hostile Muslim country.  He is despised, hated, persecuted.  He has reaped hardly any fruit.  He barely exists day to day.  It is a task just to buy or find food.  Even though he receives funds from oversees they don’t always make it to him.  And having cash is no guarantee that it will be accepted.  He has little in this world.  Ultimately his wife and child are taken.  Is he cursed?

Who is victorious?  Consider their purposes.  If the ultimate goal is to glorify God as the supreme glory and joy of the universe, who is successful?  Who has treasured Christ above all things and who has “treasured” Christ as a means to things.  As Lewis said, He will not be used as a road.  Certainly Jesus is the road, the only road, but where is He taking us?  Not to rusty things, but to a glorious Father.  He is both the means and the end.  Who has glorified Him as such?

Suffering does not equal defeat.  Often, very often it is the means to victory.

Make like a lab rat, it’s the logical thing to do.  There is risk, the electricity is real, but the Bread of Life is all satisfying.

Tolle Lege: Love in Hard Places

Readability :  1

Length:  195 pp

Author:  D.A. Carson

D.A. Carson’s Love in Hard Places touched the whole of me.  It fed my mind, enflamed my heart, convicted my conscience, and compelled me to action.  Carson is in my humble opinion (though it is substantiated by many  of higher  acumen) the best New Testament Scholar currently living, and it shows in this masterful examination of the difficult command of God to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Carson deals with loving enemies big (those who would persecute us physically or mentally) and small (that annoying co-worker).  One chapter, a most rewarding one, is dedicated toward teasing out two especially difficult cases, racism and Osama bin Laden.  In all of this Carson never ceases to be gospel, Christ, and God-centered.  This is among my most favorite of books, I highly recommend it.

There is a sense in which the followers of Jesus are to see themselves, as it were, as an outpost within time, within the time of fallenness, of the consummated kingdom still to come.

[In response to the accusation that Christian brotherly love is a lesser kind of love] More to the point, in one crucial chapter in John’s gospel, God’s intra-Trinitarian love is set forth as the model and standard of Christians loving Christians.  “I have made you known to them,” Jesus tells his Father, “and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them” (John 17:26).  It is very difficult to deprecate the love of Christians, without simultaneously deprecating God’s intra-Trinitarian love and the very unity of the Godhead.

That is why, in the ultimate sense, only God has the ultimate right to forgive sins, all sins – for all sins have first and foremost been committed against him, as David himself recognized (Ps. 51:4).  This is not to deny that many others may be abused, violated, offended; it is to say that in the ultimate sense, what gives sin its deepest odium, its most heinous hue, is that it offends the God who made us and stands as our judge.

What this suggests, then, is that moral indignation, even moral outrage, may on occasion be proof of love – love for the victim, love for the church of God, love for the truth, love for God and his glory.  Not to be outraged may in such cases be evidence, not of gentleness and love, but of a failure of love.

The Doctor: The Saint’s Marvelous Salvation

There is nothing more marvelous about one person being saved than another; there is nothing more marvelous about a man who has been a terrible drunkard being saved, than a man who has never had a drop of drink in his life; there is no difference at all, none whatsoever.  But, you see, people are interested – ‘Oh, was it not a wonderful testimony?’ they say.  ‘Did you hear it?’ My Friend, I could easily prove, if you pressed me, that it is much more difficult to save the person who has not been a drunkard, because he does not know that he is not righteous.  The drunkard does know it, he is terribly aware of it, poor fellow.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 2, p. 200

Hebrews 11:29-30 & A Missionary, A Reformer, and A Murderer

By faith the people crossed the Red Sea as on dry land, but the Egyptians, when they attempted to do the same, were drowned.   – Hebrews 11:29

When John Paton went to the New Hebrides Islands they had already killed and eaten two missionaries.  On the Island of Tanna where Paton would first minister they had driven previous missionaries off in fear.  His wife and son would die of fever in a year.  He would remain on this Island for 4 more years despite numerous and consistent death threats.  They would come to him saying “Missi [short for missionary], our fathers loved and worshipped whom you call the Devil, the Evil Spirit; and we are determined to do the same… Now, our people are determined to kill you, if you do not leave this island; for you are changing our customs and destroying our worship, and we hate the Jehovah Worship.”

He would argue with them, and tell them that if they did Jehovah would be angry with them.  He would warn them that if they killed him a British Man of War would come by and attack them, and that the traders would no longer visit them.  After such an encounter they would ease of a little for a short time.  Finally the situation grew so threatening that he had to leave.

By faith he experienced deliverance many times, and by faith he suffered the loss of wife and child.  Our faith does not mean deliverance from every pain, but the ordering of all our pains for our good and His glory.  Paton saw little fruit on Tanna, but other missionaries would harvest that ground that by sweat, prayers, and deep suffering he had tilled.  Also many would dedicate their lives to spreading the message of Jesus to the hardest parts of the earth as a result of reading Paton’s autobiography.  Ultimately John was not delivered from much suffering and pain, but he was delivered from one island to go to another.  He would next go to the Island of Aniwa and see virtually the whole Island turn to Christ.

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By faith the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days. – Hebrews 11:30

Luther was devastated.  The Reformation had caught wind and enthusiasts with more zeal than knowledge began to try to assert their position by violence.  Luther did not wish to advance his cause by human might or wisdom.  He knew it could not be.  His was a victory by faith in the heralded word of the gospel. He wrote:

Give men time.  I took three years of constant study, reflection, and discussion to arrive where I now am, and can the common man, untutored in such matters, be expected to move the same distance in three months?  Do not suppose that the abuses are eliminated by destroying the object which is abused.  Men can go wrong with wine and women.  Shall we then prohibit wine and abolish women?  The sun, moon, and stars have been worshipped.  Shall we then pluck them out of the sky?  See how much he [God] has been able to accomplish through me, though I did no more than pray and preach.  The Word did it all.  Had I wished I might have started a conflagration at Worms.  But while I sat still and drank beer with Philip and Amsdorf, God dealt the papacy a mighty blow.  – From Here I Stand by Roland H. Bainton

Or as he said in his famous hymn:

Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing;

Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing:

Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is He;

Lord Sabaoth, His Name, from age to age the same,

And He must win the battle.

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By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.  – Hebrews 11:31

Tom Papania was a grandson to one of the original mobsters who brought the Mafia to the United States.  He was hard, even criminals were intimidated to look into his eyes.  He lied, he stole, he killed.  He was ready to kill himself one evening when the phone rang.  It was a friend inviting him to church.  The pastor could see into his soul and commented to Tom that he was a hurt little boy who needed love.  Tom felt exposed and went back that evening planning on killing the pastor.  Instead he found Jesus and went on to be a prison evangelist.  (Stolen from Richard D. Phillips’ Jesus the Evangelist)

Ultimate deliverance, victory, and salvation are never found outside of faith in Jesus.  By faith in Jesus these are already ultimately ours.

Four Consistent Reads

There are four things I think every Christian should consistently read about.  If they read no more than four books a year, those four books should deal with the following subjects:

  1. God or Theology proper – Read books on the attributes of God and the nature of God.  If worship is intense without this, it is false.  If it is apathetic, this is where to begin.  When people encounter God the last thing they are is bored.
  2. Sin – Know the bane of your soul.  If affections for Christ as your Savior are small I would venture that you know little of the horrors of sin you were rescued from.  If you don’t want to study sin, ask yourself why.  I believe the answer, the true answer, will be deeply convicting.
  3. Jesus Christ (His life, death, and resurrection), The Cross, Soteriology – It is no shame for a new Christian to have to learn some terminology that is foreign to them; it is a shame for aged Christians not to have an understanding of justification, redemption, propitiation, reconciliation, regeneration, and penal substitutionary atonement.  If you read only one book a year, make it a book about the cross of Christ.
  4. Christian Biography – Especially missionary biography.  Hero standards have been dumbed down.  Reading good Christian Biographies will elevate them.  Christian Biography is a great balm for both pride and discouragement.   Pride because when I think I have really done something a glimpse, just a glimpse of someone like John Paton will waken me to my foolishness; discouragement because they were just men.  What He has done once in a Whitefield he can do again through some humble servant.  Admire not the men of God more than the God of men.  Admire them not in themselves, but in their reflecting – they are all lunar, God is solar.