The big question in religion is always: what must I do to be saved? In religion, what people pursue is something no lust or sensual pleasure, no science or art, no human or angel, something not even the whole world can give them: unperturbable happiness, eternal life, communion with God. But if this is the case, then again revelation is absolutely necessary; revelation, then, has to be the foundation of religion. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
Author: Josh King
When a Ladybug “Captures” a Rhinoceros (Matthew 26:47-56)
If you read of Jesus’ arrest and betrayal and whimper, “Oh, poor Jesus,” instead of exclaiming, “Wow what a Savior!” you’ve missed the plot. Injustice abounds but that doesn’t nullify God’s sovereignty. Jesus walks to the cross; He isn’t dragged.
The bad guys come with swords and clubs to the one who calmed a tempest with words. They might as well have come with pom-poms and feather dusters. There is no possible equalizer they could’ve had in hand; no weapon of mass destruction that would’ve leveled the playing field. These are mice with twigs in hand thinking they can take the Lion. Judas’ kiss was no kryptonite and seizing Jesus is more silly than handcuffing Superman. This is like a Ladybug clinging to rhinoceros and saying, “gotcha,” and then rejoicing because the rhino happens to be going where the ladybug desired.
Peter is as silly as the soldiers. Jesus doesn’t need his sword. More than twelve legions of angels, a force seventy-two-thousand plus strong, could be given by the Father to the Son to command at once. Jesus used a military term to communicate to Peter that the ladybugs don’t steer the rhino. Everything is happening according to the Scriptures. Jesus the suffering Savior is a sovereign suffering Savior.
The willing sufferer will surely be a willing Saviour. The almighty Son of God, who allowed men to bind Him and lead Him away captive, when He might have prevented them with a word, must surely be full of readiness to save the souls that flee to Him. —J.C. Ryle
The Dogmatician: The Target, the Arrow, and the Archer of Truth
The aim of theology, after all, can be no other than that the rational creature know God and, knowing him, glorify God (Prov. 16:4; Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 3:17). It is his good pleasure to be known by human beings (Matt. 11:25, 26). The object of God’s self-revelation, accordingly, is to introduce his knowledge into the human consciousness and through it again to set the stage for the glorification of God himself. But that divine self-revelation, then, cannot end outside of, before, or in the proximity of human beings but must reach into human beings themselves. In other words, revelation cannot be external only but must also be internal. For that reason a distinction used to be made between the external and the internal principle of knowing, the external and the internal word, revelation and illumination, the working of God’s Word and the working of his Spirit. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
Making Vodka Look Like Toddler Juice (Matthew 26:36-46)
With composure, Jesus speaks to Judas of his betrayal, to the disciples of their abandonment, and to Peter of his denial, but when He speaks to His Father of this cup, He falls on His face. What was in this cup? This cup contained far more than Jesus’ physical sufferings and social abandonment and rejection. It wasn’t the Priests’ fists and spit, the soldiers’ whips and mockery, nor the Roman’s cross that Jesus trembled at, but the Father’s cup. What was in this cup? In a word—hell. Listen to how the Old Testament speaks of this cup.
Thus says the Lord YHWH: “You shall drink your sister’s cup that is deep and large; you shall be laughed at and held in derision, for it contains much; you will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow. A cup of horror and desolation, the cup of your sister Samaria; you shall drink it and drain it out, and gnaw its shards, and tear your breasts; for I have spoken, declares the Lord YHWH. Therefore thus says the Lord YHWH: Because you have forgotten me and cast me behind your back, you yourself must bear the consequences of your lewdness and whoring. — Ezekiel 23:32-35
Thus YHWH, the God of Israel, said to me: ‘Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword that I am sending among them.’ So I took the cup from the YHWH’s hand, and made all the nations to whom the YHWH sent me drink it: … ‘Then you shall say to them, “Thus says YHWH of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink, be drunk and vomit, fall and rise no more, because of the sword that I am sending among you.” And if they refuse to accept the cup from your hand to drink, then you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the YHWH of hosts: You must drink!’ —Jeremiah 25:15-28
This was the cup we deserved to drink. This is a cup that makes vodka comparatively like Capri Sun. It is a cup no mere man can stomach. Infinite hell was bottled and poured full into this cup, dregs and all. This cup is full of the wrath of God, 100 proof. This is a drink, only God could live through, but only sinful man should drink.
In hell, souls suffer the righteous wrath of a God they hate. On the cross, Jesus bore the wrath of the Father He loves. How much did Jesus love the Father? So much that He took this cup saying, “your will be done.” The cross indeed shouts God’s love for sinners, but more loudly it screams the Son’s love for the Father. But the pain of the cross was deep to Jesus not just because of His love for the Father, but also because of the Father’s love for Him. When you look at the cross with the resurrection, as you always should, then you see that the cross was part of The Father’s plan to glorify the name of Jesus above all names. It is true that God so loved the world that He gave His Son; it is more true that God so loved His Son that He gave Him the world. One of the glorious mysteries of the cross is that while Jesus was bearing the Father’s wrath for our sins He was simultaneously rendering up an obedience that perfectly pleased the Father. How pleased is the Father by Jesus’ obedience? Your saved! The presence of all us unworthies in heaven eternally enjoying the love of God is the evidence of how much the Father loves the Son. The throngs of heaven from every tribe, people, tongue, and nation are the Father telling the son, “I love you this much.”
But while on the cross the Son tasted only bitter wrath, so that we might taste sweet salvation. Jesus turns a cup of wrath into a cup of salvation, but He must first drink it and let it come to us through His own veins.
Now He gives to His people ‘the cup of salvation’ (Psalm 116:13) these two cups, one so bitter, the other so sweet, stand side by side: the one cup necessitated the other. One cup was emptied that the other might be filled to overflowing. The first cup guaranteed the second. Both cups are precious and bear the hallmark of sovereign grace. ‘what shall I render to the LORD for all His bounty to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD…’ (Psalm 116:12,13).—Frederick Leahy
Tolle Lege: Live Like a Narnian
Readability: 1
Length: 161 pp
Author: Joe Rigney
At the conclusion of Prince Caspian, Peter and Susan share with their younger siblings that they won’t be returning to Narnia because they “were getting too old.” Lucy exclaims, “Oh Peter. What awful bad luck. Can you bear it?” “Well I think I can,” said Peter. “It’s all rather different from what I thought. You’ll understand when it comes to your last time.” For the Pevensies, being in Narnia made them better for their world, not the worse. Though I’ve enjoyed the film adaptations, I have to agree with Rigney, the filmmakers largely don’t get Narnia or Lewis. They need to go back and learn. Rigney, like the Pevensies, hasn’t missed the point. He has been well discipled by Narnia. He is the better for it in this world. You would be the better too for breathing deep of Narnian air. For those who have breathed, and love Narnia, Live Like a Narnian is a superb relishing of those breaths.
But it’s not enough to simply feel something in response to the objective reality of the world. You must also feel rightly and proportionately to the way the world is. …
Following Plato, Lewis believed that we ought to initiate the young into these right responses, even before they are able to rationally understand or explain what they are feeling. The goal of such inculcation of right responses is that, when a child raised in this way grows up and encounters Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, he will welcome them with open arms, because he has been prepared for, and indeed, resembles them already.
Which brings us, finally, to the function of the Narnian stories in Lewis’s vision of education. The Narnian stories display through imaginative fiction and fairy tale the way that the world really is. Here is courage and bravery in its shining glory. Here is honesty and truth-telling in its simplicity and profundity. Here is treachery in all its ugliness. Here is the face of Evil. Here also is the face of Good. A child (or adult) who lives in such stories will have developed the patterns of thought and affection that will be well-prepared to embrace the True, the Good, and the Beautiful (that is, to embrace Jesus Christ) when he finally encounters them (Him!). Like John the Baptist, Lewis and his cast of Narnians will have prepared the way.
The Dogmatician: We Know God because God knows God.
No knowledge of God is possible except that which proceeds from and by God (Matt. 11:27; 1 Cor. 2:10ff). …His self-knowledge and self-consciousness is the source (principium essendi) of our knowledge of him. Without the divine self-consciousness, there is no knowledge of God in his creatures. Pantheism is the death of theology. The relation of God’s own self-knowledge to our knowledge of God used to be expressed by saying that the former was archetypal of the latter and the latter ectypal of the former. Our knowledge of God is the imprint of the knowledge God has of himself but always on a creaturely level and in a creaturely way. The knowledge of God present in his creatures is only a weak likeness, a finite, limited sketch, of the absolute self-consciousness of God accommodated to the capacities of the human or creaturely consciousness. But however great the distance is, the source (principium essendi) of our knowledge of God is solely God himself, the God who reveals himself freely, self-consciously, and genuinely. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
No Recipe Failure (Matthew 26:17-30)
“It’s the holidays; what’s the plan?” Jesus doesn’t respond with a frazzled, “I don’t know, what do you guys think?” Jesus tells them to go into town and that they’ll find a certain man.
The first major conflict of the War of Independence went down in New York. General Washington watched as 400 British ships filled the harbor. Washington was courageous but indecisive. He wasn’t sure where the enemy would strike. He divided his forces against a superior foe and lost. Jesus may be sorrowful over the cup, but He never gives any indicator that He is uncertain about strategy. There isn’t a hint of strategy stuttering, analysis paralysis, or war plan waffling here. Everything is going according to plan.
The disciples make preparations for the Passover, but they are preparing this Passover the way a cooking student would prepare a meal. When the student shows up to class, preparations have been made for their preparation. The recipe, the utensils, the appliances, the ingredients are all there ready for them. The disciples are preparing a Passover meal as part of Jesus’ preparing the Passover meal.
Every Passover up this point was a dress rehearsal with a stand-in cast. The curtain is about to lift on the true one time showing of the climatic act of the drama of the universe. Jesus is both the Host and the Fare of the true passover. He is the Priest who offers up the Lamb, and the Lamb offered up. He has prepared the meal perfectly. There will be no recipe failure. Perfect bread broken for us; perfect wine poured out for us. All according to the recipe.
Tolle Lege: A Place for Weakness
Readability: 1
Length: 194 pp
Author: Michael Horton
With multitudes of Osteens infecting the masses with a fuzzy message of nothing-but-sunshine-and-smiles the need for something solid to stand on is dire. Lambs are being told that they are being fed, true, but for the slaughter. They are fed full; full of artery-clogging, fat-rich lies. Out of shape, and vulnerable, Satan roars and prowls on such weak one. Suffering strikes and such sheep are soft. and sickly.
John Piper wrote “the antidote for wimpy Christians is weighty doctrine.” Horton, puts strong truth under your feet in a gracious way. Sufferings presence in this life is not made light of, the gospel of the dark sky and the risen Christ is made much of. The time to prepare for suffering is before the suffering strikes. Christian, read books on suffering, even if you’re not suffering, read them. A Place for Weakness would be an excellent one to start with.
Understanding who God is, who we are, and God’s ways in creation, providence, and redemption-at least as much as Scripture reveals to us-is to the trials of life what preparing for the LSAT is to the practice of law. Theology is the most serious business. Preparing for this exam is not just a head game or a prerequisite for a temporal vocation, but it’s a matter of life and death. It is about our heavenly vocation and its implications for each day here and now. It’s about living, and dying, well.
In times of crisis, the most important thing we can do is go to church. Chiefly, this is where God’s herald announces that “external Word” that contradicts our private judgments. Working against the tide of our inner experience and thoughts, this announcement comes rushing toward us like water from the Himalayas: “You are forgiven; go in peace.” It is also where Christ gives himself to us anew, sealing his fidelity to our salvation in his Supper, joining us with his saints fellowship in invocation of his merciful presence, confession, prayer, and praise. Here we take our place, despite our misgivings, doubts, fears, and temptations, not with the scornful and proud, but with our fellow pilgrims.
The Dogmatician: Theology Isn’t Dull
Dogmatics is the system of the knowledge of God as he has revealed himself in Christ; it is the system of the Christian religion. And the essence of the Christian religion consists in the reality that the creation of the Father, ruined by sin, is restored in the death of the Son of God and re-created by the grace of the Holy Spirit into a kingdom of God. Dogmatics shows us how God, who is all-sufficient in himself, nevertheless glorifies himself in his creation, which, even when it is torn apart by sin, is gathered up again in Christ (Eph. 1:10). It describes for us God, always God, from beginning to end God in his being, God in his creation, God against sin, God in Christ, God breaking down all resistance through the Holy Spirit and guiding the whole of creation back to the objective he decreed for it: the glory of his name. Dogmatics, therefore, is not a dull and arid science. It is a theodicy, a doxology to all God’s virtues and perfections, a hymn of adoration and thanksgiving, a “glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14). —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Theology
Blessings Fall Like Rain, not Missiles
May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us, Selah
that your way may be known on earth,
your saving power among all nations.
—Psalm 67:1-2 (ESV)
Blessings fall like rain, not missiles. The immediate power of a missile may be more impressive, but the rains’ power is the more impactful. The missile hits, and its power is soon exhausted. The rain falls, and its life-giving impact continues on for ages. Because of the rain, a fruit seed germinates, a man is later nourished by that seed, that man then works to provide for his family, his nurtured son finds a cure for some disease, many are then healed. Blessings fall like rain. Blessings are not a zero sum game. When someone else is blessed that does not mean you’re not. When God blesses the farmer, others eat, and even more benefit from those others eating. When God blesses one man on this earth He blesses them all. When God blesses Abraham, He blesses the world. Not all know God’s saving grace, but all men know varying degrees of common grace on this earth because of God’s saving grace. When God blesses His people, they are the light and salt of this earth; the earth benefits from their being blessed.
We’re saved to the praise of God’s glorious grace. Grace need not fall directly on us for us to rejoice in it or benefit from it. Grace is often like fireworks. It’s when it goes off over there, that you can most behold its glory. Our joy should be in the magnifying of God’s grace, so that wherever it falls we rejoice, “Look, more amazing grace! There, there, and there too.” When God’s grace falls on others, do not be jealous for self, but zealous for God.
No Other Boast 