Josh King

Tolle Lege: Family Shepherds

Readability: 1

Length: 179 pp

“If you can’t say ‘Amen!’ you can say ‘Ouch!’” so Voddie often says. Well I say “Ouch!” and “Amen!” to his book Family Shepherds. Convicting but not condemning, men, you will not only be encouraged but equipped to shepherd you family after reading this book.

Ask any Christian, “Who is responsible for discipling children?” and you’re likely to get the right answer: “Their parents.” However, probe further and you’ll find confusion, conflation, equivocation, and perhaps downright indignation toward any approach to discipleship that’s actually predicated on this unquestioned premise. While we all agree on the clear biblical mandate for parents to disciple their children, we’re unclear as to what that entails. We’re even less clear on the role the church is to play in offering instruction and support in this endeavor.

Part of the problem lies in that we usually begin from the wrong starting point. Virtually all the debate over the discipleship of young people begins with the assumption that church structures and programs such as the nursery, children’s church, Sunday school, and youth group are foundational discipleship tools, and whatever happens must take place within that framework. But what if those things didn’t exist? What if there were no nurseries, or youth groups, or Sunday schools? How, then, would we propose a plan for one generation to “tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might, and the wonders that he has done” (Ps. 78:4)?

Fortunately, we don’t have to invent such a scenario from scratch. All we have to do is open the pages of the Bible and begin reading. There we find a world where the aforementioned programs and ministries did not exist; there we find a disciple-making model that looks almost nothing like the institutional structures with which we’ve become so familial. And there we find family shepherds.

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The Pilgrim: A Hammer Beyond Thor

The instrument with which the heart is broken, and with which the spirit is made contrite, is the Word. …This rock, this adamant, this stony heart, is broken and made contrite by the Word. But it only is so, when the Word is as a fire, and as a hammer to break and melt it. And then, and then only, it is as a fire, and a hammer to the heart to break it, when it is managed by the arm of God. No man can break the heart with the Word; no angel can break the heart with the Word; that is, if God forbears to second it by mighty power from heaven. …Wherefore, though the Word is the instrument with which the heart is broken, yet it is not broken with the Word, till that Word is managed by the might and power of God. —John Bunyan, The Acceptable Sacrifice

Purifying a Fount by a Fount (Matthew 23:13-36)

Pharisees prioritize outards over innards. They fret more over an external behavioral scab than an internal existential cancer. They have ornate solid silver water bottles without a speck of tarnish on them that they have polished to a mirror shine, yet the inside is a cesspool. They only care to be seen drinking from such a bottle. They are a book wishing to be judged only by the cover.

The point isn’t about their cups and plates, if it were they would only redouble their efforts and scour all the more. The point is that they are the bottle.

The heart is the fount. All of our behavior flows out of it. You can’t purify a fountain by going down stream and laboring endlessly at gathering buckets of water, purifying them, and then dumping them back in the stream. This is what all attempts at moralism, behavioralism, and self-salvation are. If you try to cap off the flow of wickedness in one area of your life be assured pressure will build and the pipe will burst elsewhere, or more likely, in the same already compromised spot, causing greater damage. The hearts gotta flow. If it is pumping life is coming out. If you try to pump good into it, you only increase the pressure and that inflow is still filtered through your poisonous heart and thus contaminated. All self-righteousness is like trying to clean an already dirty house with a vacuum filled to the brim with refuse that has a gaping hole in the bag. All our work only adds to the mess.

And yet, our only hope for our innards is on the outside, but further out that the surface of your skin. Our hope is all the way up in the highest heaven, and yet is in flesh; Heaven enfleshed. Our salvation is achieved by someone behaving perfectly—for us—from a pure heart. There is a purifying Fount. There is a stream, that when it flows into your heart, purifies. The Outside comes in, and purifies from the inside out.

Tolle Lege: Unpacking Forgiveness

Readability: 1

Length: 193 pp

Author: Chris Brauns

Sometimes forgiveness is hard. Some people make it too easy. I don’t mean easy to forgive them, they make the act of forgiveness too easy. They say forgiveness is to be automatic and unconditional. I like Unpacking Forgiveness because no matter which side of the teeter-totter the big kid has you stuck on there is solid Biblical wisdom for you here. Forgiveness can be extended in the hardest of situations, and it shouldn’t be automatic, and sometimes there are consequences to actions even after forgiveness. This book is Biblically faithful, incredibly practical, illuminatingly illustrated, and deeply needed.

[God’s] forgiveness can he defined in the following way.

God’s forgiveness: A commitment by the one true God to pardon graciously those who repent and believe so that they are reconciled to him, although this commitment does not eliminate all consequences.

God’s forgiveness is gracious. He offers forgiveness freely. This is not because forgiveness is free in terms of cost. It is a very expensive gift that can be offered freely because, motivated by love, God sent his one and only Son to pay the price for it.

God’s forgiveness is a commitment. When God forgives us, he makes a commitment that we are pardoned from our sin and that it is no longer counted against us.

God’s forgiveness is conditional. Only those who repent and have saving faith are forgiven.

God’s forgiveness lays the groundwork for and begins the process of reconciliation. When God forgives us, our relationship with him is restored.

Not all consequences are immediately eliminated. God disciplines his children as a father disciplines his children (Proverbs 3:12).

God expects believers to forgive others in the way that he forgave them.

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The Pilgrim: Take Heart, Press On

I have sometimes seen more in a line of the Bible than I could well tell how to stand under, and yet at another time the whole Bible hath been to me as dry as a stick. —John Bunyan, Grace Abounding

No, Brutus Really Is an Honorable Man! (Matthew 23:1-12)

Does Jesus really mean for His disciples to do “whatever (23:3)” the scribes and Pharisees tell them?

Jesus says they’re hypocrites (23:3), so do whatever they tell you.

Jesus here says their hypocrisy isn’t the variety that teaches good but lives bad; but the kind that teaches bad and lives worse (23:4), and to do whatever they tell you.

Jesus says that they lay heavy burdens on people, but do whatever they tell you (23:4).

Jesus says they do their acts to be seen by others (23:5-7), yet, do whatever they tell you.

Jesus says “but you (23:8),” contrasting His disciples with the scribes and Pharisees, yet they must do whatever the Pharisees tell them.

Jesus says they are blind guides (23:16-17), yet do whatever they tell you.

Jesus, six times tells his disciples, “You have heard that it was said [by the Pharisees], but I say unto you… (Matthew 5:21-48),” contrasting His teaching with theirs; still, they are to do whatever the Pharisees tell them.

Jesus says to beware of their leaven, their teaching (Matthew 16:6, 12), but to do whatever they tell you.

Jesus says the kingdom is being taken from them (Matthew 21:43), but to do whatever they tell you.

Jesus says that the Pharisees (John 5:37-40) don’t have God’s word abiding in them, that they search it, but are really clueless as to what it really is about, yet, they are to do whatever the scribes tell them.

Jesus asks the Pharisees again and again, “Have you not read? (Matthew 12:3; 19:14; 21:16, 42),” still, they are to do whatever the those Pharisees tell them.

Jesus, has just been addressed as “Teacher,” three times by the Pharisees and Sadducees with a smirk, but His credentials were authenticated while theirs were ridiculed (22:15-46); still, do whatever they tell you.

Jesus goes on to pronounce seven severe woes of judgment on them (23:16-37), but do whatever they tell you.

Yeah. Ok. Whatever! and Marc Antony really meant that Brutus is an honorable man.

Monotone Jesus was not, biting irony and sarcasm He knew. Don’t read Jesus as woodenly as the Pharisees read Deuteronomy 6:8 and make your phylacteries broad. Oh how pious you are; not even Jesus can tell a joke in your presence. Just to be clear, that was sarcasm.

The Pilgrim: How to Come Boldly

To tell you what it is to come boldly, is one thing; and to tell you how you should come boldly, is another. Here you are bid to come boldly, and are also showed how that may be done. It may be done through the blood of sprinkling, and through the sanctifying operations of the Spirit which are here by faith to be received. And when what can be said shall be said to the utmost, there is no boldness, godly boldness, but by blood. The more the conscience is a stranger to the sprinkling of blood, the further off it is of being rightly bold with God, at the throne of grace; for it is the blood that makes the atonement, and that gives boldness to the soul (Lev 17:11; Heb 10:19). It is the blood, the power of it by faith upon the conscience, that drives away guilt, and so fear, and consequently that begetteth boldness. Wherefore, he that will be bold with God at the throne of grace, must first be well acquainted with the doctrine of the blood of Christ; namely, that it was shed, and why, and that it has made peace with God, and for whom. Yea, thou must be able by faith to bring thyself within the number of those that are made partakers of this reconciliation, before thou canst come boldly to the throne of grace. —John Bunyan, The Throne of Grace

No Partial Credit (Matthew 23:41-46)

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. —A.W. Tozer

You can think high thoughts of Jesus and descend into the lowest hell. Jesus asks these Jewish leaders what they think about the Christ. They’re Jews, of course they believe in the Christ, right? Well, they believe in a Christ. A Christ that is a composite of the parts of the Bible that they like, and their own ideas, which is really to say a Christ of their own ideas. What they really believe in is not Christ, but themselves. Technically though, they get the question right, insofar as they answer. The Christ definitely is the son of David; but while He is not less than that He is also infinitely more. You don’t get partial credit on this test, and this is the test. It matters not how else you may succeed in life, if you flub this question you fail life.

Satan is perfectly content for you to believe 99% truth if he can get you to believe a 1% damnable lie. Satan is fine with your squeaky clean morally upright life, as long as he can get you to believe something along the lines of what a Mormon, or a Jehovah’s Witness, or a Pharisee does concerning Jesus. Have you ever considered how orthodox many heretics are except for that one thing? Study church history. Study the heresies that the church most violently fought against. The key battles were concerning the person and nature of Jesus Christ. This isn’t an academic, technical, or scholarly conundrum. This isn’t a boggling question for theologians. Satan knows this. What do you think about the Christ? What you think about Him is revealed by the answer to another question: Whose son is He? We have no reason to flunk this test other than that we are willfully, sinfully, defiantly ignorant. Jesus has given us the answer.

Christ says that he is ‘humble and meek’ and we believe Him; not noticing that, if He were merely a man, humility and meekness are the very last characteristics we could attribute to some of His sayings.

I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. —C.S. Lewis

The Pilgrim: No Back Door to the Throne of Grace

I must come by his blood, through his flesh, or I cannot come at all, for here there is no back door. —John Bunyan, The Saints’ Privilege and Profit

Get Drunk and Love (Matthew 22:34-40)

When it comes to gods, deep down everyone is a monotheist. There can be only one. Either God is God, or the individual. All of life is love. Love is constantly being expressed. Man cannot not love. Every bit of existence we have is spent loving, worshipping, something. Yet, fallen men cannot love. In loving themselves, they hate love (John 3:19-20). Men hate light because they love darkness, which is another way of saying that they hate love.

By God’s common grace, and because man is made in God’s image, there is a muted echo of love that the unbeliever may hear and that may resound off and through the unbeliever, but it is always second-hand, always an echo and never the original tune. It is always muted, never amplified. It is always a first-grade crush on your married teacher, never marriage consummated and well aged like a vintage wine. It is like saying that you have tasted wine when a drop, a single drop, fell into your full glass of water. The world’s concept of love is diluted. You could never get intoxicated on it.

Jesus extends the cup of the new covenant, the intoxicating, behavior altering wine of His blood, that we might know love and love. If fallen man loves to hate love, how can he ever love love? Let me give you two answers, which are two ways of saying the same thing: covenant and a heart transplant. Listen carefully to the command, “love the Lord your God.” The context for this command is Deuteronomy, redemption, salvation. God, not because of anything Israel has done, calls a people unto Himself. He enters into covenant with them. And His covenant love gives His people a new heart (Deuteronomy 30:6; Jeremiah 31:31, 33; Ezekiel 36:26-27). A heart that loves Him, that loves His Son, that loves His law, that loves others, that loves His creation—that loves, really loves.