It is impossible to conceive of a praying man, therefore, as destitute of grace. If he prays, really prays, he draws near to God with heart open for grace, humbly depending on Him for its gift. And he certainly receives it. To say, Behold he prayeth! is equivalent, then, to saying, Behold a man in Christ! -B.B. Warfield, Prayer as a Means of Grace
Author: Josh King
Matthew 8:23-27 & The Awesome
But that little ship did present a figure of the Church, in that she is disquieted ‘in the sea,’ that is, in the world, ‘by the waves,’ that is, by persecutions and temptations; the Lord, through patience, sleeping as it were, until, roused in their last extremities by the prayers of the saints, He checks the world, and restores tranquility to His own. – Tertullian
So the boat is the church, the sea the world, the waves persecution and temptation, Jesus’ sleeping His patience, the disciples cries the prayers of the church, and Jesus stilling the storm His deliverance? Nope. That is a horrible way to read this text. The boat is… a boat. The sea is the sea, the waves are waves, Jesus is Jesus, and the disciples are disciples. What then is the point of this story? How are we to relate to it? You are meant to with these disciples, as disciples, marvel at the Christ.
While few may be in danger of allegorizing the text as Turtullian did, many may spiritualize the text and make application in a similar way. “Come to Jesus when the storms of life suddenly arise and you will have peace.” There is truth in that, but that is not the point of this text. Jesus says, “Peace, be still” and all is calm except for their hearts. Luke says “they were afraid and they marveled.” Mark adds further insight recording they were “filled with great fear.” The storm is stilled but they are still in awe. Something more awesome remains in their presence.
“Awesome” has to be one of the most abused words in the English language. Films are awesome, CDs are awesome, clothes are awesome, gadgets are awesome, you might even have a friend who is awesome. No, that which is awesome arouses a complex mixture of dread, wonder, and veneration. Storms are awesome, tornadoes are awesome, hurricanes are awesome, earthquakes are awesome, volcanoes are awesome, tsunamis are awesome. Here these disciples encounter the exceedingly awesome. When sinful men encounter the glory of the holy Christ, they are filled with awe.
The tragedy of their fear and little faith is that they were more in awe of the storm than the Sovereign, but that soon changed. They caught a glimpse of Jesus, and when they did faith flourished, worry wilted, and fear was properly redirected.
The tragedy of all humanity is that we were made for the Awesome, but we are enamored with the trivial. No wonder our faith is so small and our fears are so big.
The Pugilist: True Doctrine Begets Prayer
Every type of religious teaching will inevitably beget its corresponding type of religious life. And that teaching alone which calls upon man to depend wholly on the Lord God Almighty—our loving Father who has given His Son to die for us —for all the exercises of grace, will make Christians whose whole life is a prayer. -B.B. Warfield in Prayer as a Means of Grace
Matthew 8:18-22 & The Cost and the Christ
Nothing, in fact, has done more harm to Christianity than the practice of filling the ranks of Christ’s army with every volunteer who is willing to make a little profession, and talk fluently of his experience. It has been painfully forgotten that numbers alone do not make strength, and that there may be a great quantity of mere outward religion, while there is very little real grace. Let us all remember this. Let us keep back nothing from young professors and inquirers after Christ. Let us not enlist them on false pretenses. Let us tell them plainly that there is a crown of glory at the end. But let us tell them no less plainly, that there is a daily cross in the way. – J.C. Ryle
Jesus is redeeming a vast people for Himself from every tribe, language, people, and nation, but he is not after a crowd, he is after disciples. Jesus is not after a million-man-militia ready to run at the first hint of danger, He is after the 300 of Thermopylae ready to lay down their lives, and He lets you know the terms up front. Jesus does not refuse either one of these would-be disciples, nor does he eagerly accept their proposal, rather he calls them to think. He calls them to count the cost.
You cannot barter the terms of you discipleship. You may not build your own custom Christ desiring the benefits of knowing Him as Savior without the demands of His being Lord. What are the terms? All. Your heart, your mind, your will, in totality, are to be His.
Discipleship costs, but it is a blissful bankruptcy. In sacrificing all we are the ones who receive. We give up the finite for the infinite. So yes, count the cost, but also consider the Christ.
Tolle Lege: The Explicit Gospel
Readability: 1
Length: 222 pp
Author: Matt Chandler
The Explicit Gospel aims to make the gospel, well… explicit. Chandler does a swell job by presenting the gospel in systematic categories (God, man, Christ, response), which he labels “the gospel on the ground”, and within the Biblical storyline (creation, fall, reconciliation, consummation), which he labels “the gospel in the air”. In theologian’s terms he presents the gospel using both systematic and Biblical theology. While I might squirm a little at the sparse language of “being missional” and “redeeming the culture,” (for why read this book) there is everything here that I love about Chandler’s ministry – the gospel is clearly communicated and set against moralistic therapeutic deism.
And out of our self-regard, we like to picture that a holy, glorious, splendid God—perfect solely within his Trinitarian awesomeness—wanted to be able to stand in a warm-hued living room, romantic music swelling, and look across at us to say, “You complete me.”
The point is that if we are going to orient around anything less than God—even things that look happy and shiny and pretty, even things that God himself gives us to enjoy—or slip in even a moment’s worship of something other than God, we are declaring our preference for the absence of God. This is called pride, and even a sliver of it deserves its end result: the place where God isn’t. And let’s be honest: nobody has just a sliver of pride.
Knowing this, we don’t need all thirty-six verses of “Just As I Am,” a plaintive pleading from the altar, heads bowed, eyes closed, and shaky hands raised to issue a gospel invitation. No, the invitation is bound up in the gospel message itself. The explicit gospel, by virtue of its own gravity, invites belief by demanding it.
The Pugilist: What is Prayer but…
The soul in the attitude of prayer is like the flower turned upwards towards the sky and opening for the reception of the life-giving rain. What is prayer but an adoring appearing before God with a confession of our need and helplessness and a petition for His strength and blessing? What is prayer but a recognition of our dependence and a proclamation that all that we dependent creatures need is found abundantly and to spare in God, who gives to all men liberally and upbraids not? What is prayer but the very adjustment of the heart for the influx of grace? -B.B. Warfield in Prayer as a Means of Grace
Matthew 8:1-17 & The Leper
Initially, as he approached, He seemed to be just yet one more joining the crowd to see this One who spoke with such authority and worked wonders. But as he drew nearer they noticed that his clothes were torn, his hair hung loose, and his upper lip was covered. He was an outcast. He was a leper! Surely he would divert his path, at least he would soon cry out, “Unclean, unclean!” so that the crowd could divert theirs.
***
Leprosy could refer to several diseases that could affect the skin in a particular way including Hansen’s Disease (Leviticus 13). Hansens’ disease is a peculiar disease. It is not dreaded for the pain it causes (though in the initial stages there is some), but for the pain it anesthetizes. Leprosy does deform, but the most severe damage comes precisely because the leper doesn’t feel any pain. But to the Jew the most dreaded aspects of this disease were not physical, they were religious and social. According to the law the leper was unclean. That is why the leper asked to be cleansed rather than healed. You were healed of other diseases, but you were cleansed of leprosy. Being unclean he dwelt outside the camp. He dwelt alone. He was a picture of sin, cast away from God and God’s people.
***
Perhaps others started to slow down and murmur. They didn’t want to touch this leper and render themselves unclean. Jesus’ pace and trajectory didn’t change, neither did the lepers. The holy Christ and the unclean leper were on a collision course. The crowd gasps, they are shocked, they step back. This is taboo. The leper’s boldness was matched only by his reverence and humility. Now “Lord” could mean nothing more than “sir” in this culture, but when applied to God it was a title of supreme sovereignty. This bold leper, this bowing leper was not simply being polite, he recognized in Jesus a supreme kind of authority. The question was not whether or not Jesus could heal him, but would He heal him?
***
Later in the 5th century the Talmud would say to stay at least 6 feet away from all lepers, 150 feet if the wind was blowing. This dread disease is contagious by contact and can be airborne; hence the prescriptions in the law (such as covering the upper lip) had a practical as well as spiritual purpose.
***
The lepers boldness is not the most socially starling thing in our text. Though the leper’s behavior is both shocking and a violation of the law, it is understandable from a human point of view. One can understand the loneliness and desperation this man must have felt. No, the most astonishing actions here are not those of the leper, but Jesus. Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him!
***
Leprosy wasn’t something one was commonly healed from, this is one of the reasons it was so dreaded. In the Old Testament only two persons are healed by leprosy, Miriam via Moses’ prayers (Numbers 12), and Naaman via Elisha’s advice (2 Kings 5:1-4). Both were healed without touch, from a distance.
***
Jesus would later heal from a distance in this chapter. Jesus didn’t need to touch this leper, He wanted to touch this leper. Just imagine what that touch must have felt like. Just to be touched by someone must have been wonderful, but to be touched by Jesus! Moreover to feel His gracious healing touch, well, we can only speculate as to the bliss that leper’s heart was filled with. This leper could never come close to God’s temple of stone, but in the temple of Jesus’ flesh God came close to Him.
***
Jesus cleanses more than sin defiles. Edmund Clowney well writes,
Ceremonial symbolism in the Old Testament uses the fundamental distinction between the clean and the unclean. The comparison of sin to filth is linked with the need for cleanness to approach holy things of the holy Lord. The prevailing power of sin is shown in the fact that the unclean pollutes the clean, never the other way round. Haggai’s message focuses on this feature (Hag. 2:10-14). In fulfillment, the prevailing power of Christ reveres this principle. When Jesus touches a leper, Jesus is not defiled, the leper is cleansed…
You are cursed with a greater malady of which leprosy is a fit, but faint analogy. You have only one hope, His name is Jesus, and He is willing to heal would you reverently bow to His supreme authority.
Tolle Lege: Amazing Grace
Readability: 1
Length: 281 pp
Author: Eric Metaxas
I’m not looking for a savior on Capitol Hill, mine died on a hill called Golgotha, but o that God would raise up politicians like William Wilberforce who love the Savior, are men of impeccable integrity, fight for great causes, possess a sanctified political brilliance, and persevere despite incredible opposition.
Some might find Metaxas’ style a bit distracting; I think the life of a eloquent and witty man excuses, perhaps even calls for a clever flourish here and there. Here is an account of a beautiful life, beautifully written.
God changed the world through Wilberforce. Wilberforce’s chief great cause that He devoted his life to was the abolition of the slave trade. May God raise up a man with the spirit of Wilberforce to fight tenaciously against what I believe is the greatest blight on our nation today – abortion. May Amazing Grace
, or another Wilberforce biography give you hope, not in Capitol Hill, but in the mercy of our God.
To fathom the magnitude of what Wilberforce did we have to see that the ‘disease’ he vanquished forever was actually neither the slave trade nor slavery. Slavery still exists around the world today, in such measure as we can hardly fathom. What Wilberforce vanquished was something even worse than slavery, something that was much more fundamental and can hardly be seen from where we stand today: he vanquished the very mind-set that made slavery acceptable and allowed it to survive and thrive for millennia. He destroyed an entire way of seeing the world, one that had held sway from the beginning of history, and he replaced it with another way of seeing the world. Included in the old way of seeing things was the idea that the evil of slavery was good. Wilberforce murdered that old way of seeing things, and so the idea that slavery was good died along with it. Even though slavery continues to exist here and there, the idea that it is good is dead. The idea that it is inextricably intertwined with human civilization, and part of the way things are supposed to be, and economically necessary and morally defensible, is gone. Because the entire mind-set that supported it is gone.
‘Dear Sir:
Unless the divine power has raised you us to be as Athanasius contra mundum [against the world], I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be fore you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.
Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a ‘law’ in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this?
That he who has guided you from youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things, is the prayer of, dear sir,
Your affectionate servant,
John Wesley’
The Pugilist: Prayer a Confession of Weakness
In its very nature, prayer is a confession of weakness, a confession of need, of dependence, a cry for help, a reaching out for something stronger, better, more stable and trustworthy than ourselves, oil which to rest and depend and draw. -B.B. Warfield in Prayer as a Means of Grace
Matthew 7:13-29 & The Charge of Arrogance
Some will say that in the Sermon on the Mount we find Jesus at His truest; simply a fine moral teacher, perhaps the best there ever was. People who offer such analysis simply can’t read. Jesus’ claims to supreme authority are the warp and woof of this fine tapestry, unravel this thread and the beauty is lost.
Jesus says those who are persecuted for His sake are blessed (5:11). Jesus does not simply say he came to keep the law, but to fulfill it, that He is everything that it points to (5:17). Repeatedly, at least twelve times, Jesus says something like “I say to you”, or the more emphatic ‘Truly, I say to you,” emphasizing that He stands as the authority behind His own words. He does not quote the Scriptures or appeal to other teachers as the scribes do, He does not even say “thus says the Lord” as the prophets do, His words carry their own authority precisely because they are His words. Great men don’t speak like this. Sane men don’t speak like this. If Jesus is not divine He is not a good man, He is the worst kind of man.
With nuclear force you collide with this reality in this text. Jesus calls for a decision. You cannot simply be amazed at His authority as the crowds were, you must bow to it. The doctrine you must clearly face here is the supremacy and exclusivity of Christ.
Concerning the narrow way some may say that it seems so, well, narrow. By that charge I take it they mean arrogant. Imagine you go to a doctor and he tells you that you have a certain problem, immediately you think of your friend who had a similar malady and only needed minimal surgery with one tiny incision. The doctor explains that your problem is such that it requires intensive and extensive surgery, it is the only way. After further multiple expert collaborations would you deem all such doctors narrow and arrogant?
I think the charge of arrogance is laid before us not because we claim to know the only way, but because people think that like doctors we do it based on our own expert knowledge and authority. But they are laying the charge of arrogance at the wrong feet. I haven’t found the only way by my own intellectual superiority or spiritual fervor, it was graciously revealed to me as good news. I didn’t make the news, I heard it, and now I tell it. Christians don’t claim Jesus is the only way on the basis of my own authority, I claim it on His.
Ultimately the charge of narrowness and arrogance is self-defeating. When others say that it is arrogant to say that your religion is superior, that all others are wrong, and that you shouldn’t try to convert others, they themselves are making a religious statement they think is superior to yours and trying to convert you to it. So who is arrogant? Upon what authority do you make your truth claim? Ultimately it must be yourself. Oh sure you may read others, but you are the one who has ultimately evaluated and decided.
So let us all lay the charge of arrogance where it belongs, at the feet of all humanity. As Christians we don’t deny our hubris, we admit it, repent of it, and bow to kiss the Son (Psalm 2). In such light, the narrow way isn’t arrogant, it is gracious.
No Other Boast 