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Delighting in the Saints
Peter preached on the day of Pentecost about the resurrection of Jesus. He said, “God raised him [His Son] up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to held by it” (Acts 2:24). Then Peter proved his point by quoting Psalm 16:8-11 and made the following application.
Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.
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Birds of a Feather
Where the old [way of education] initiated, the new merely ‘conditions’. The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly; the new deals with them more as the poultry–keeper deals with young birds–making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation–men transmitting manhood to men; the new is merely propaganda.
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As the Year Turns
We’ve arrived at the turn of the calendar when people typically consider their food intake and the health of their hearts. God’s people ought to do the same, not only in terms of physical well-being, but also evaluating and planning Bible intake as the year turns.
If you’re a Christian, whether you’re seven or eighty, you should be craving to eat more Bible. There are many reading plans and more than one type of media, but God’s Word must be gotten in.
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Savior of the Nations
It is worth returning regularly to John’s vision of the throne and the Lamb in Revelation 5. We are reminded what the Lamb has done and what He is making. In doing so we are also reminded of what we are part of.
John saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, and four living creatures and twenty-four elders who were singing a new song.
“Worthy are you to take the scroll
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No Good Drunk
The first man to get drunk that we know about was Noah. He’s given credit for consummate obedience in the matter of the ark, he’s given credit for cultivating science in the matter of the vine, and he’s given no free pass in the matter of his overindulgence. He sinned, albeit in the privacy of his tent, because he drank too much.
We ought to appreciate Noah’s viniculture. As the psalmist sings, God causes plants to grow that man cultivates for wine that gladdens man’s heart (Psalm 104:15).
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Irrigating Deserts
For every one pupil who needs to be guarded from a weak excess of sensibility there are three who need to be awakened from the slumber of cold vulgarity. The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes.
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Grasping and Grabbing
If one of the central sins in the heart of man is grabbiness (and it is), then what would be the best solution?
When the kids can’t wait to rip open the twelfth present before they’ve finished opening the seventh, what do responsible parents do? They calm everyone down with a grapefruit face, then make a mental note that next year no kid get more than six presents. Actually, they don’t need any.
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Wrapped with Ribbon
I am fond of saying that there are a lot of ways to mess things up. Gift-giving is one of those subjects that falls under such a proverbial tree. Let’s say that there are four kinds of ribbon you can use to wrap your gifts, and only one of them is well-received.
Three kinds of ribbons stick to your fingers. First is giving wrapped in guilt. You feel like you must give because that’s the “tradition,” or you must give because the other person gave you something last year and it was better or nicer than what you gave him.
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Hiding Behind a Newspaper
I assume most of you heard about the massacre in San Bernardino two weeks ago. Fourteen people were killed and twenty-one wounded in a terrorist attack. Within hours of the shootings, a number of conservative politicians used their social media channels to communicate their “thoughts and prayers” for the families of the victims. The Daily News (a newspaper in New York City) printed their front page with pictures and brief passages of praying sound bytes with the headline: “GOD ISN’T FIXING THIS.
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Christmas Is Overboard
How do we learn what we should do on Christmas? By remembering what God did at Christmas.
Celebrate the stuff. Use fudge and eggnog and wine and roast beef. Use presents and wrapping paper…You do not prepare for a real celebration of the Incarnation through thirty days of Advent Gnosticism. At the same time, remembering your Puritan fathers, you must hate the sin while loving the stuff. Sin is not resident in the stuff.
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The Blood of a New Humanity
I grew up in a Baptist church where we didn’t potluck without casseroles or sing without hymnals. As a kid I remember thinking that we sang a lot of hymns about blood, and I was especially confused about the song “Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
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Gravy That Requires Forks and Knives
One passage that Joe Rigney readily and rightfully keeps on repeating in The Things of Earth is 1 Timothy 4:4-5.
For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.
I’m not sure how many week’s worth of exhortations are latent in this rich Scripture soil, but as we’re studying Genesis 8 and 9 at church, with Noah back on dry ground and God adding a whole protein-packed page to Noah’s menu, I thought we could think through at least one exhortation.
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Your Paper Is Too Small
Though we know that passages in the Old Testament addressed to Israel were not written to us, Paul said that they are still for us. What happened to them is recorded for us as an example “that we might not desire evil as they did” (see 1 Corinthians 10:6, 11).
Let’s learn from one of those Old Testament passages, Deuteronomy 28. The entire chapter describes blessings on those who are faithful and curses on those who won’t obey the voice of the Lord.
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Adorned with Divine Delight
A fantastic footnote (#10) found in chapter 6 of The Things of Earth (paragraphs added):
Now observe that when that clever harlot, our natural reason (which the pagans followed in trying to be most clever), takes a look at married life, she turns up her nose and says, ‘Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up nights with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labor at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that, and whatever else of bitterness and drudgery married life involves?
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Getting Accustomed Again
Noah was 600 years old when the rain came down and the floods came up. He spent one of our entire lifetimes just building the ark. That project kept him busy, but life was basically the same for him until the day the Lord shut him in safety. A year later when he disembarked, life was similar and yet it could not be the same as before.
As Christians, we learned one way of living before the way of salvation.
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He Condemned the World
The world prefers that we do not confess when we disobey God. For that matter, the world prefers when we do not obey God. It might seem as if this puts us in a position where we cannot win. By faith we know that it means we are.
Noah showed how this works.
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household.
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The Reformer’s Days
Charles Spurgeon, “Holding Fast the Faith”:
Everybody admires Luther! Yes, yes; but you do not want anyone else to do the same today. When you go to the…gardens you all admire the bear; but how would you like a bear at home, or a bear wandering about loose in the street? You tell me that would be unbearable, and no doubt you are right.
So, we admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago; the past ages are sort of a bear-pit or iron cage for him, but such a man today is a nuisance, and must be put down.
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Enthroned over the Cross
There are hard things that happen in the world. Though the gospel has had a great affect on many peoples, many other peoples haven’t heard the gospel or received the gospel. Sinful men, left to themselves, destroy themselves, destroy one another, and destroy society.
God sent a flood to destroy the destroyers and, to David, this was a reason to sing about God’s sovereignty. It was also a reason to sing about how the same God gives strength and peace to His people.
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The Blockheads of Earth
The Pharisees asked Jesus about the coming of the kingdom recorded by Dr. Luke in chapter 17 of his gospel. Jesus told the Pharisees that the kingdom of God was “not coming in ways that could be observed,” and followed up with His disciples after the public interchange.
Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
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Separate from the Sexual Fray
God takes all sin seriously, though sexual sin is regularly referenced as a remarkable reason for God’s judgment. Paul did say, “every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18). There are additional, personal consequences.
The world has a long history of relational disaster. Our generation is a troubled one but not the first one to be troubled.
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Our Supernatural Squeamishness
We need God to poke our supernatural squeamishness. One of the greatest, subtlest dangers of our day is the (false) assumption that every effect has a natural cause. By natural I mean a materialistic, mechanistic, impersonal energy that explains everything.
Christians are getting better at understanding God’s immanent involvement in the natural world. Things work how He wants and they work because He keeps speaking. “He upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3).
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A Certain Way
I’ve posted about Enoch a few times the last few weeks. Though he is exceptional, he is also an example.
The author of Hebrews includes Enoch in the Hall of Faith.
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God. (Hebrews 11:5)
Genesis doesn’t explicitly state the part about pleasing God but it makes sense.
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Choose Your Own Epithet
Moses highlights Enoch in the family tree from Adam to Noah in the Genesis 5 genealogy. Enoch is seventh in line through Seth and compares with the polygamist, murder-poet Lamech who was seventh through Cain. Not only is Enoch not proud like Lamech, twice Moses says that Enoch “walked with God.” Enoch had received the heritage of those who called on the name of the Lord (see Genesis 4:26) and his communion with God was the high point of that line.
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A Site to See
There’s a new website for the Raggant Fiction Festival that includes audio and video for all seven talks. You can also download an audiobook of the whole kit.
My talk is here: The Testimony of an Unlikely Convert.
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New Soil
As sons of Adam we have his sin. We don’t need to learn sin, in the words of our modern theologian Lady Gaga, we are born this way. Being born this way, where every intention of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil continually, is not an excuse for sin, like the Lady intended, but it is the reason we need a savior from sin.
When God saves us He doesn’t just pull up the weeds.