- John Stott, The Cross of Christ, 23

The passage in 2 Peter:3-11 has meant a very great deal to me in the past month, I have drawn much strength from it. There are so many great truths in this passage which sets forth God’s whole purpose for us in Christ Jesus to share in God’s divine nature, His power on our behalf is displayed, the necessity of our striving, a way that never fails, and a kingdom that does not end. Wow, this passage is rich, deep, broad, and strengthening.

Last Thursday, on Thanksgiving morning while I was sick, the three words came to my mind, “make every effort.” I was quite sure that they were from this passage and just before the instruction to add virtue to faith, knowledge to virtue, and so on. When I got my Bible and looked it up, I was thrilled to be right!

What struck me was the force of the instruction make every effort! I use italics, underlining, and boldfacing there to show the sort of crescendoing impact of those three words as I hear them.

In verse 3, the Apostle Peter tells us that God’s divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through knowing Jesus Christ. Then he turns around in solid apostolic fashion and tells us that we must do something in turn. We must make effort. The Gospel is opposed not to effort, but to earning. Even more though, we are to make every effort.

The effort we are to be making is clear: adding love to brotherly affection to godliness to steadfastness to self-control to knowledge to excellence (or virtue) to faith (to put in reverse order). And we are to be striving to take every opportunity to do so; every prayer, every service, every day, every song, every act, every thought, every word, every greeting, every project, every sermon, every car ride, every breath, every meal. We are to make every possible effort to grow from faith into love.

This short three-word phrase, “make every effort,” is code for spiritual discipline and it is how we sow to the Spirit (Gal. 6:7-9). And it calls us to repentance for our lazy Christianity and sluggish spirituality. True faith is going to require action; spiritual growth will not come laying down; progressing towards love will require movement. This is not going to be a sit-in, no letting-go-and-letting-God here. No, we are to be actively striving and acting in every possible biblical way to grow from faith into love (with every supplement mentioned in vv. 5-7 added along the way, though I don’t think the list is exhaustive).

This means the spiritual disciplines, both the personal and the communal, integrated into the very stuff of our life, our eating, drinking, breathing, working, playing, serving, all our moments and our days. Yes, we wait on God to grow us, but we are not idle: we do not wait by sitting, we wait by sowing.

I don’t know how you navigate life from day to day but one thing I have discovered in 2011 is that I simply cannot operate without a deep measure of joy in the living God.

If you grew up in a church using the Pentecostal Praises hymnal then you probably know what page 202A was: “Joy Unspeakable.” We wore that song out, but we loved it, and I loved it. I always was happy when the song leader turned to the organ player and said, “202A!”

But my favorite hymn on joy is this classic song, “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.” The melody was taken from the Ode to Joy, the last movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, one of the beautiful pieces of music ever written, and the words are from a poem written in 1907 by Henry Van Dyke. The melody and the words were published together for the first time in The Presbyterian Hymnal of 1911.

No other song captures for me the truth that God alone is the source of abiding and lasting joy. And I particularly enjoy this contemporary rendition of it with several new refrains added. It is the most played song on my iPod in 2011.

There are many things I can go without, but I tend towards despondency and the one thing I must have is joy in the Lord because joy and hope are two sides of the same coin.

Psalm 43:3-5 [ESV]
3 Send our your light and your truth;
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
and to your dwelling!
4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God my exceeding joy,
and I will praise you with the lyre,
O God, my God.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.

A Neglected Essential from Southern Seminary on Vimeo.

Here is an outline of the whole exposition:

• The Ascension
  • Christ spent 40 days with His disciples before ascending answering their questions & teaching
  • The angels heralded His ascension just as they did His incarnation.
• Descriptive analysis of the passage:
  • He led them out
  • He lift up His hands (and blessed them, perhaps with the Aaronic blessing)
  • He left them
    • He was taken up into heaven in a cloud.
    • He had told his disciples: I am going to prepare a place for you that where I am you may be also.
    • Christ physically went and remains somewhere in the time-space universe.  That verse has to be held in the context of all the revelation of Scripture: Christ was Incarnated, died, buried, and rose again bodily.
    • The cloud here are not meant to make us think of the clouds of the sky but clouds in the Scriptures: The cloud that led the Israelites in the wilderness, the cloud on Sinai, the cloud that filled the Temple, the cloud on the mount of Transfiguration
    • He, as it were, ascended up into the folds of space (CS Lewis) – the realm of the 4^th dimension. This would make a good discussion over coffee!
• The Significance of the Ascension
  • The Ascension declares Mission Complete, the Work of Redemption is Finished.
  • The Ascension declares God’s mighty power.
  • The Ascension marked the return of Jesus to the Father, a return to the glory He had known before.
  • The Ascension inaugurated the giving of the Holy Spirit in a unique and unrepeatable way at Pentecost.
  • The Ascension guarantees our heavenly home.
• What is Jesus doing now that He has ascended?
  • Jesus is now presiding over the universe.
  • Jesus is now ruling His church.
  • Jesus is now with us in our weaknesses.
  • Jesus is now interceding for us.
• How His Disciples Reacted
  • They responded in adoration: “they worshipped him”
  • They responded in exultation: “returned to Jerusalem with great joy”
  • They resulted in preparation: “continually in the Temple”
    • Acts 1:8 – “wait until you be endued with with power from on high”
    • So the text leaves the disciples (in Luke 24:53) waiting, worshipping, and witnessing.
• Conclusion: Isn’t this what we are doing?
  • We are waiting
  • We are worshipping
  • We are witnessing

“Jesus, Thank You” by Sovereign Grace Music, led by Bob Kauflin.

Samson was driven by great lusts, he acted nearly always by impulse, and never does one get the sense that the man knew God. He had power with God but I never see in the text that he knew the Lord in any other sense than that his parents set him apart for God through the Nazirite vows. I think that part of the point of the narrative of Judges is to show the increasing wickedness of the people of Israel including their own judges. Samson appears to be one of the final judges and certainly the worst. The Samson narrative gives way to a period of syncretistic worship and civil war. A dark day indeed.

Judges 16 presents to us the final days of the life of the tragic Samson. He loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek. I love the literary compactness and concision of description in the biblical narrative. Epic. Her name was Delilah and she was the final of at least three Philistine women that Samson chased.

Delilah. What kind of woman was this? She asks her Israelite lover and strong man: “please tell me where you great strength lies and how you might be bound, that one could subdue you?” (vs. 6). What a bald and bold question! How could Samson not see her deception? Did he enjoy this cat and mouse game? Did he like walking on the precipice? Apparently. But eventually he was literally lulled to sleep on the lap of his enemy (v. 19). Then he was bound, his eyes were gouged out, and he was enslaved to grind at a wheel.

Regardless of the heroic moment of Samson’s death, this story is high tragedy as profound as anything Shakespeare could have imagined. A man, no matter how great, cannot toy with lust and win. He does not have the power. He will be destroyed by the very thing he desires.

I have been thinking about this verse a lot of recent. It motivates me and encourages me as a student of the Lord. Studying is a hobby of mind, as well as reading and collecting good books, so a Scripture like this ready ammunition against those who demean the labor of study and hard thinking.  But what can we learn from this verse?

First, studying is one of the basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life. Praising, praying, and pushing back our plates to fast are all basic disciplines but we rarely talk about this one, the discipline of study. Studying takes time. Studying requires effort. Studying requires patience. It is more than reading. It is doubtless related to seeking solitude and meditation but it goes beyond that. It involves an intentional seeking out, investigation, process of discovery, and the capture of one’s effort by pen, paper, keyboard, or computer.

Second, this discipline is engaged in by those who delight in the works of the LORD. There is a sense of inevitability here, like the moth drawn to the flame, or to give a more life-affirming metaphor, a deer drawn to a stream. We see here that the “upright” (vs. 1) are those who delight in God’s work. And because they delight in God’s works they are pulled into contemplation, reflection, and deep thinking on what God has accomplished, revealed, and spoken. This impulse to study is not driven by duty or demand but by delight. Delight is the greatest motivator in the world.  People do what they enjoy. What kind of people are the upright? Those who enjoy thinking upon the things of God. 

Of course, studying is not easy. We are talking about disciplines but drudgery is not a necessary component of discipline. Some use verses such as Ecclesiastes 12:12, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh,” in reference to study of the Scriptures but it does not apply here.  Ecclesiastes is a book which poetically and proverbially lays out the futility of man-centered thinking. In that context, the kind of study implied in Ecclesiastes is from a man-centered view of the universe that is “vanity of vanities.” Just think of the piles of books in the stacks of your nearby public university and imagine being stuck there forever looking for answers from the great learned men of the ages-Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Spinoza, and all the rest with their lineage of interpreters-and never able to arrive at coherent answers. Yes, that is futility!  Those books will wear you out, but the Book will give you life. University studies may exhaust you, but those who wait upon the Lord receive strength (Isaiah 40:31).

Third, the focus of study is on the works of the LORD.  It is the great works of the Lord that the upright delight in, not the exercise of study itself. Study for the sake of study for the sake of personal smarts is not the goal here, that kind of study is the kind that leads to weariness of the flesh! The works of the Lord is a broad term encompassing all that God has done from the awesomeness of His creative power, to His mighty acts of deliverance and judgment, the giving of His law, and His inspired words through the prophets.  This is all of reality under God and God-filled.  The upright see the universe as a stage for the drama of God’s plan.  This allows the believer to stake a claim on everything and study it before God with God in clear view but giving each subject its own due.  However, we must not lose sight here that the centerpiece of this study is God Himself and all His works.  There is an implied circle of delight here: God reveals Himself in His works, the upright delight in them and study them, God reveals more of Himself, the upright study and find delight, and forever this will continue…  As Lewis ended the Chronicles of Narnia with the words, “…and every chapter was better than the last!”

But I’ve heard some doozies as well.  Some real colossal failures (and that’s ok, I myself have preached some colossal failures) and a number of trite, silly ones too.  I’ve heard some things that were ridiculously off-base even while the congregation was shouting.  Oh, the things I’ve heard.

I’ve been told that when King Joash was smiting the ground with arrows at Elisha’s command (2 Kings 13:14-25) that it was a type of fighting the flesh.  Our bodies came from dirt, the ground, and the ground is the type of the flesh, and the smiting of the arrows is battling our flesh.  The way to victory, we were, told is to keep smiting the flesh.  It was the sort of biblical interpretation and preaching that the early Christian ascetics and self-flagellating medieval monks would have greatly enjoyed.

I’ve heard that a woman shaking her hair to God can bring victory over personal trials and the Devil.  And a number of other things have fallen out of bad approaches to 1 Corinthians 11:2-16.  I’m not sure how that all works.  If it has worked for some, I’m sure it has everything to do with the faith and worship of the woman, and not with the act of shaking the hair like a tribal dance.  One thing is for sure, the hair shake, is not in the text.

I’ve heard that we were right at the very end, the end of all things, just about every year since 1988, with a lot more of that thing during the first Gulf War, and a bunch just prior to 2000. Obviously, this hasn’t happened yet.  But it hasn’t kept preachers for trying to figure this out and creating all sorts of elaborate interpretations from parts of Scripture to account for the times.

I’ve heard a week-long exposition of the book of Esther as a blueprint for the endtime revival.  That was a long time ago, but I think by now the Church was already supposed to have been in control of the media for the spread of the Gospel.  Of course, that has not happened.  And let it be said: the book of Esther is categorically not a blueprint for endtime revival.

I’ve heard it said that the water of the sea of Galilee was a type of baptism.  That’s why the pigs of Gadara ran into the water after they were possessed by the demon(s) called Legion.  Evidently, the pigs were smart enough to know that water exorcised demons and therefore ran to the water to be free of them.

I’ve heard that everyone has “issues” of life just as the Samaritan woman had an “issue” of blood.  Ok, this is a serious equivocation of terms.  There are issues and then there are issues, the kind with blood, and they are not the same thing.

I once endured a re-telling of the Good Samaritan at a youth rally  as an elaborate allegory for the Christian life.  It would have made Origen proud.

More than a few times I’ve heard bible passages turned completely on their face.  Colossians 2 comes to mind.  Or Moses on the mountain determining the mountain’s boundaries as an example of a pastor setting standards (there are a number of reasons why that does not work).

I’ve heard numerous sermons where any mention of numbers leads to numbered lists of things we must do or know.  The four men who carried the lame man to Jesus and lowered him through the roof becomes “four for revival” or “four faithful foundations”, etc., etc., etc.  Any mention of three things in the text becomes: 1) repent, 2) be baptized, and 3) get the Holy Ghost.  (Of course, three things for Trinitarians becomes, yes, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost).

And sadly, there have been not a few times, when the text of Scripture read had nothing to do with the sermon preached.  Instead, the sermon was built on a poem, or a newspaper article, or an illustration, or a great story, or even a testimony.  And I must say, that if you are going to use newspaper articles please learn which papers are generally reliable and which ones are grocery-aisle rags.  The truth is that none of this is biblical preaching.  Granted biblical preaching can use poems, articles, illustrations, stories, and certainly testimonies, but biblical preaching must place the priority on the Bible’s contribution as the core of the sermon.

Whatever the results of the preaching, these are all failures of a sort.  Thank God, He can draw a straight line with a crooked stick.  Thank God, He can speak through donkeys.  And all we preachers and teachers are going to occasionally fail in this regard.  I myself have preached some real doozies.  I look back at my stack of sermons and a few of them still bring the color red to my cheeks and I want to burn the notes.  But with humility and an intense devotion to what the Scriptures actually say we can avoid the more spectacular kinds of hermeneutical and homiletical failures.

Looking at all of this, I am very, very thankful for the great number of times I’ve heard faithful preachers simply stick to the text and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The power of God does not reside in fanciful reconstructions of the text, or in traditions of interpretations we’ve added, or in elaborate illustrations, or in rhetorical flourishes.  The power of God resides in the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ (Rom 1:16, 1 Cor 2:1-4).

I may have offended some of you in the reading of this, let me assure you: no offense intended.  All preachers have failed in this regard including you, your favorite preachers, me, and my favorite preachers.  This does not change the point made here: We need a radical re-commitment to the Scriptures and what they actually say.  I hope that you are in this (the call to preach) to proclaim the Word and get it right, because at the end of the day, when it comes to knowing God’s mind, the text of Scripture is all we have and it is sufficient (2 Tim. 3:14-16).

Brothers, we must be committed to the actual text of Scripture and to the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.    Sola Scriptura! Soli deo gloria!

“Discipline without direction is drudgery. But the Spiritual Disciplines are never drudgery as long as we practice them with the goal of Godliness in mind. If your picture of a disciplined Christian is one of a grim, tight-lipped, joyless half-robot, then you’ve missed the point. Jesus was the most disciplined Man who ever lived and yet the most joyful and passionately alive. He is our Example of discipline. Let us follow Him to joy through the Spiritual Disciplines.” – p. 24

My observations: We often follow godliness as some ambiguous idea, a misty mystery of drippy spirituality speaking puffy but pointless platitudes and cluttered cliches.  Or, on the other side, we fall off into a rule-based regulatory regimen created by men for divine extra-credit.  This is why, I think, we often end up with “grim, tight-lipped, joyless” robots of religion.  But in the Scriptures, godliness and holiness are not vague ideas, rather, in the New Testament, God has put a face on godliness.  The face of godliness and the figure of holiness in the New Testament is Jesus Christ.  He is what holiness and godliness look like. If there are things that Jesus did which trouble you (like dine and drink with sinners or overturn tables), or if even Jesus could not live up to your extra-credit system (he did have a beard you know), then your understanding of godliness and holiness must be re-framed.  Jesus is the direction of our godliness; Christ-likeness the goal of all our religion. If it (whatever it is) does not conform to that picture then it should be cut away as excess, and if it is excess it should not be added back in.

“I’ve seen Christians who are faithful to the church of God, who frequently demonstrate genuine enthusiasm for the things of God, and who dearly love the Word of God, trivialize their effectiveness for the Kingdom of God through lack of discipline. Spiritually they are a mile wide and an inch deep. There are no deep, time-worn channels of communing discipline between them and God. They have dabbled in everything but disciplined themselves in nothing.” – p. 21, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life

There’s still a lot of money in it, but no Cash.

It’s tired, but never Haggard.

It’s still got twang, but no Waylon.

They’re still dancing in a line, but it’s not all Strait.

“We need to get one thing straight before we go any further. Gottfried Wilhem von Leibniz (1646-1716) was the last man who knew everything. This means that no matter how compulsive we may be, no matter what expectations we think our professors or our congregations may have of us, no matter who we think we are, we can no longer hope to know everything. We cannot even know everything about some biblical book or pericope we might want to preach from. One important key to a lifetime of faithful, solid and productive exegesis is to remember that it truly does take a lifetime-and even then, it will not be finished! Go with what you have; build on what you gain. Listen, assimilate, absorb, but take your time… The temptation to feel responsible for buying a book (let alone reading it!) simply because it exists is an invitation to drop into the abyss.” – p. 94

- Russell Moore, Tempted and Tried

HT: dougwils.com

A summary exhortation by Moore: Why You’re Tempted.

An interview of Moore with Justin Taylor of Crossway:

HT: Justin Taylor

HT: dougwils.com

Total depravity is the truth taught by the Scriptures that human beings since the fall of Adam and Eve are utterly sinful.  It does not mean that all humans are as possibly wicked as they could be, no, we can thank the restraining grace of God that that isn’t so.  But it does mean that all humans are truly sinful, evil, and wicked in their natural state.

The 19th century American pastor and evangelist, Ichabod Spencer (quite a name for a preacher) would confront people with God and if they would reply, “I am a sinner” or “I have sinned,” he would often reply, “You have no idea how wicked you really are.”  Wow, we have come a long way from that.  Amazingly Spencer was noted for leading many people to Christ and he was correct. The Scriptures declare this bald truth: “the LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” (Psalm 14:2-3).

Original sin is the truth taught by the Scriptures that the sinfully bent-out-of-shape nature experienced by Adam and Eve after their disobedience was passed along to murderous Cain and faithful Abel and all the way down to you and me.  It is inherited by being a descendant of Adam, or as Lewis put it: a son of Adam or a daughter of Eve.  Yes, we are, and we have collectively proven so generation after generation.

These are difficult and unpalatable truths for all of us.  According to the Bible, we are born sinners, have all proven it repeatedly, and we are justly deserving of death and hell.  But I don’t know you and I don’t know your sweet grandmother.  And we can argue over whether some great man, be he Socrates or Gandhi, will be so condemned apart from Christ, but let me merely say that the one sinner that I know the most, namely myself,  qualifies.  The sinner I know has demonstrated many times over his sinful nature, and finds it amazing not that God would actually condemn him, but that God would not condemn him.  I’m that man, and I know what I deserve.  So count me in with John Newton for I can sing with complete agreement: “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”