Hymns I’m Angry I didn’t Learn As a Child (9)

I discovered this little gem reading Keller’s The Prodigal God.  I especially love the last stanza of this hymn, let me know what you think.

 

We Were Sinners Once as You Are By John Newton

 

Shall men pretend to pleasure

          Who never knew the Lord?

Can all the worldling’s treasure

          True peace of mind afford?

They shall obtain this jewel

          In what their hearts desire,

When they by adding fuel

          Can quench the flame of fire.

 

Till you can bid the ocean,

          When furious tempests roar,

Forget its wonted motion,

          And rage, and swell, no more:

In vain your expectation

          To find content in sin;

Or freedom from vexation,

          While passions reign within.

 

Come, turn your thoughts to Jesus,

          If you would good possess;

‘Tis he alone that frees us

          From guilt, and from distress:

While he, by faith, is present,

          The sinner’s troubles cease;

His ways are truly pleasant,

          And all his paths are peace.

 

Our time in sin we wasted,

          And fed upon the wind;

Until his love we tasted,

          No comfort could we find:

But now we stand to witness

          His pow’r and grace to you;

May you perceive its fitness,

          And call upon him too!

 

Our pleasure and our duty,

          Though opposite before;

Since we have seen his beauty,

          Are joined to part no more:

It is our highest pleasure,

          No less than duty’s call;

To love him beyond measure,         

 And serve him with our all.

Tolle Lege: The Deliberate Church

1

Readability (1-3):  1

Length:  202 pgs

Author:  Mark Dever and Paul Alexander

There is an ocean of contemporary books being written about the church.  They are an ocean.  They are ever changing, never steady, constantly fluctuating.  If things appear calm from the surface there is either turbulence underneath, or a storm approaching.  In this ocean of pragmatic, novel, faddish, and often unbiblical approaches to church there are a few solid islands to set your feet on, islands that are grounded and steady.  Mark Dever is one such Island.  If someone were to ask me who was a good contemporary author to read on the church, I would first think of Mark Dever.  Mark’s concept is very simple and sadly radical to the western church – that is the Word of God which should shape our church.  Here are the first six paragraphs of the introduction.

What are we building?

It would be patently stupid to start construction on a building without first knowing what kind of building we plan to construct. An apartment complex is different from an office complex, which is different still from a restaurant. They all have different blueprints, different kinds of rooms, different materials, uses, and shapes. So the process of building will be different, depending on what kind of structure we’re planning to build.

The same goes for building a church. A church is not a Fortune 500 company. It’s not simply another nonprofit organization, nor is it a social club. In fact, a healthy church is unlike any organization that man has ever devised, because man didn’t devise it.

It only makes sense, then, for us to revisit God’s Word to figure out what exactly He wants us to be building. Only then will we understand how to go about building it. Negligence here will result in both temporal and eternal futility. Temporally, a church is a spiritually heavy thing to build, and it is designed for heavy relational use. It requires the strongest materials, and those materials must be placed in the correct, load-bearing positions specified on the biblical blueprint so that structural integrity is built in. No matter how beautiful the facade, our structure will crumble if we build on a sandy foundation or with shoddy materials.

Eternally, our work will withstand the fire of the last day only if we build with the “gold, silver, precious stones” specified on the biblical blueprint (1 Cor. 3:12). Building without that blueprint will virtually guarantee that we will build with the cheaper and more abundant resources of “wood, hay, straw,” all of which will burn in the end (vv.

13-15). Ignoring God’s plan for the church and replacing it with your own will ensure the eternal futility of your work. Here at the outset, then, it is critical to reflect biblically on this foundational question: What is a local church?

Fundamentally, God intends the local church to be a corporate display of His glory and wisdom, both to unbelievers and to unseen spiritual powers (John 13:34-35; Eph. 3:10-11). More specifically, we are a corporate dwelling place for God’s Spirit (Eph. 2:19-22; 1 Cor. 3:16-17), the organic body of Christ in which He magnifies His glory (Acts 9:4; 1 Corinthians 12). The Greek word for church is ekklēsia, a gathering or congregating of people. The church is God’s vehicle for displaying His glory to His creation.

The uniqueness of the church is her message—the Gospel. The church is the only institution entrusted by God with the message of repentance of sins and belief in Jesus Christ for forgiveness. That Gospel is visualized in the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, both instituted by Christ. The distinguishing marks of the church, then, are the right preaching of this Gospel and the right administration of the biblical ordinances that dramatize it.

The Doctor: The Great Breakup

Because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done, and because of what has happened to Him, and because of our union with Him, it is true to say of us that our whole relationship to sin and all it can do has been fundamentally changed.  We are no longer in the position in which we were when we were born as the children of Adam.  We were under the dominion, under the reign, and the rule of sin.  That is no longer the position, we have been ‘translated’ out of that ‘into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son’ (Colossians 1:13).  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 5, pp. 124-125

Genesis 3:1-7 & Take and Eat

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.  – Genesis 3:6

She took… and ate: so simple the act, so hard its undoing.  God will taste poverty and death before ‘take and eat’ become verbs of salvation.  – Derek Kidner

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’  – Matthew 26:26

The Doctor: A Help in Interpreting Romans 6

As we come to this detailed outworking of his argument by the Apostle it is essential that we should hold clearly in our minds what he is setting out to do.  He is refuting the charge brought against his teaching stated in the first verse, ‘Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?’  He is not giving an exposition of the way of holiness and of sanctification, as is commonly suggested; he is simply refuting the charge that is brought against the doctrine of justification by faith, and against the finality and certainty of our salvation in Christ.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 5, p. 42

Genesis 2:18-25 & Don’t Play – Not Even With The Nerf Gun

Dating without any reference to marriage is as dangerous as shooting a gun without any reference to a target.

Genesis 2:18-25 gives us the context for intimacy between a man and a woman, it is marriage.  Do not decontextualize the intimacy of marriage and place it in dating.  Courtship should correspond to marriage the way a Nerf gun corresponds to a handgun, there will be similarities, but they are drastically different. 

Please don’t carry the analogy too far though.  Dating may be the Nerf gun, but it is still serious.  Be faithful with the lesser Nerf gun of dating, and you will be prepared to be faithful with the real gun of holy matrimony.  Date with purpose, not for leisure.  A marriage that expounds the mystery of Christ and His Church is the target – AIM!

Constraining Grace

…he debated with fellow religious prisoners whether the assurance of God’s love promoted holiness or license.  Fellow prisoners challenged Bunyan saying, ‘You must not keep assuring people of God’s grace because they will do whatever they want.’  Bunyan responded, ‘That is not true for God’s people.  If you keep assuring God’s people of his grace, then they will do whatever he wants.’  – From Christ-Centered Preaching by Brian Chapell

The Doctor: The Misunderstood Test

The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge [antinomianism] being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that it really amounts to this, that because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like because it will redound all the more to the glory of grace. If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel.  – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans Vol. 5, p. 8

Genesis 2:4-17 & The Divine DTR

God has Defined The Relationship. 

I think most people in the west make two deadly assumptions concerning their relationship with God.

1)    It exists and it is good.  They have never had to do anything to gain it, but they most assuredly have it.  They are not super serious about the relationship from their side, but they are convinced the Divine is intensely serious about them.  Here God is a Cosmic Care Bear, a Santa Clause on steroids, and a Mr. Rodgers who is everybody’s neighbor.

 

2)   They deny such a relationship exists altogether.  They may or may not be adamant about this.  Most likely this exists in a soft form of apathy.  Whether or not there is such a relationship to be had they just don’t care.

With the rise of an ethereal spirituality in the US I think most people place make the former assumption.  They are like the 5 year old whose girlfriend is their kindergarten teacher, the relationship isn’t really real.  They “talk to God” kind of like the 30 year old guy who lives in grandma’s garage “talks to girls” online while wearing Star Wars pajamas – the relationship ain’t really real.

We only relate to God within the structures of covenant.  Covenant relationships are serious, and this is the most serious relationship of all.  Now it is true that all mankind does relate to God as their creator, and God has a posture to general benevolence toward all of mankind, but man as a whole is in violation of covenant, this covenant (Hosea 6:7).  The favor and blessing of God are absent.  We are excommunicants of the covenant, we are now a dying death.  Relationship with God is so serious that the only basis for it is perfection. 

You are saved by works.  Covenants are unchangeable.  They may be superseded, this one never was.  This covenant was not annulled, it was fulfilled.  Again, you are saved by works, the catch is that they are not your own.  Every time you read the gospels, think to yourself as you see the perfect living of Christ, “that is my righteousness by faith”.  Every time you read the gospels, think to yourself as you see cursed death of Christ, “that is my curse”.

You are either in Adam or in Christ.  You relate to God in one of these two ways.  God has defined the relationship.

Tolle Lege: Just Do Something

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Readability:  1

Length:  122 pgs

Author:  Kevin DeYoung

I loved this book.  It is worth it for its modern Puritan-esque title alone: Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will or How to Make a Decision Without Dreams, Visions, Fleeces, Open Doors, Random Bible Verses, Casting Lots, Liver Shivers, Writing in the Sky, etc.  Pastorally it is so useable; this will probably be my go to book for persons who come to me wrestling with the will of God for their life for years to come.  I won’t say much more about the book, the quotations should be enough to glean the big idea.

[W]e should stop thinking of God’s will like a corn maze, or a tight-rope, or a bull’s eye, or a choose-your-own-adventure novel.

[W]hen we look carefully at the instances of special revelation in the book of Acts – visions, angels, audible voices, promptings, etc. – we notice  one very important and consistent fact.  The extraordinary means of guidance were not sought.  I don’t deny that God can still speak to us in direct surprising ways.  Of course, it must be tested against scripture, but I believe God can still give visions.  The Point is that these extraordinary means in the New Testament are just that – extra-ordinary.

In short, God’s will is that you and I get happy and holy in Jesus.

 

So go marry someone, provided you’re equally yoked and you actually like being with each other. Go get a job, provided it’s not wicked. Go live somewhere in something with somebody or nobody. But put aside the passivity and the quest for complete fulfillment and the perfectionism and the preoccupation with the future, and for God’s sake start making some decisions in your life. Don’t wait for the liver-shiver. If you are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you will be in God’s will, so just go out and do something.