A Glory Hunter: The Bible--Its Not All About Us!

Friday, April 12, 2019

The Bible--Its Not All About Us!

Sometimes we read the Bible as if it were fundamentally about us and our moral improvement, our victory over sin, or our comfort. We have a tendency to see God’s Word as a collection of timeless principles that will give us our best life now if we simply apply those principles. We search its pages as we would any “self-help manual” when we are in need of advice. And sometimes, we think the Bible is about us and what we’ve done or are doing wrong. But, by looking at the Bible as if it were fundamentally about us, we totally miss the point of Who and What the Bible is all about—like the two men on the Road to Emmaus in the Gospel of Luke who had to learn that the Bible is about Jesus and what He did.

Luke 24:44-47 makes as one of its many points, that it is possible to read and study the Bible all the while missing the whole point of the Bible so that in reading the stories in the Bible—we miss the Story of the Bible. Unless we go to the Bible and see Jesus and his work upon the cross on behalf of people whose best works are as “filthy rags” before God (Is. 64:6) we have missed the main point. Furthermore, if we see Jesus’ work in the redemption of man as being primarily for and about man we have also missed the point and are in danger of turning even our most devout Bible reading into fuel for our own man-centered, man-glorifying narcissism.

Contrary to popular assumptions, the Bible is not a Book about or for good people looking to become better. Rather, it is a Book about and for bad people who realize they cannot become better. That is not a typo. The Bible is not about how to improve our lives so as to please God and earn His acceptance so as to one day live with Him in Heaven. Its not about “good” people reaching up to God; it’s about God reaching down to bad people who cannot improve their lives so as to become acceptable to God. Far from being a book for people looking for morals to live up to, the Bible is a Book for people who having failed to live up to God’s laws are looking for mercy and grace.

In essence, the Bible is one long story of God meeting man’s rebellion with His rescue; man’s sin with His salvation; man’s catastrophic personal failures with His favor; man’s guilt with His grace; and man’s intrinsic moral depravity and sinful corruption with His goodness. Likewise, the Bible’s overwhelming focus is not on the works of man but the work of God. It’s just not a Book about us as much as it is a Book about God and that is why it is Good News for us.

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Thoughts Worth Repeating

"A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats." -Charles Spurgeon
"There's not a single square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, Who is Sovereign over all, does not cry out: 'Mine!'" -Abraham Kuyper
"Don't let your gifts and talents take you where your character cannot keep you." -unknown
"Grace is the premise that salvation is all of God through all of Christ for all of us." -Jared Wilson
"You never go away from us, yet we have difficulty in returning to You. Come, Lord, stir us up and call us back. Kindle and seize us. Be our fire and our sweetness. Let us love. Let us run." - Augustine of Hippo
"Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. To worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God--all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable." -William Temple
"Humble pastors produce humble congregations, and humble congregations are fruitful." -Bill Farley (Gospel-Powered Humility)
"If its big enough to worry about its big enough to pray about" . -Pastor Donny Patrick
"If you want to hear God speak read His Word out loud." -Pastor Donny Patrick

This is my current 2020 reading list.

Christ Alone~The Uniqueness of Jesus As Savior (Stephen Wellum)
Being A Pastor~A Conversation With Andrew Fuller (Haykin, Croft, & Clary)
The Glory of Christ In Modern English (John Owen, edited by Jason Roth)
John Newton~From Disgrace to Amazing Grace (Jonathan Aitken)
A Big Gospel in Small Places (Stephen Witmer)
The Gospel-Driven Church (Jared Wilson)
The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification (Walter Marshall 1692)
Feels Like Home~How Rediscovering the Church As Family Changes Everything (Lee Eclov)
From Fear to Faith~Habakkuk (D. Martin Lloyd-Jones)
Last Things First~Unlocking Genesis 1-3 With the Christ of Eschatology (J.V. Fesko)
Pastoral Graces~Reflections On The Care of Souls (Lee Eclov)
The Care of Souls~Cultivating A Pastor’s Heart (Harold L. Senkbeil)
The Kingdom of God (D. Martin Lloyd-Jones)
The Prodigal Church~A Gentle Manifesto Against The Status Quo (Jared C. Wilson)
Worship Matters~Leading Others To Encounter the Greatness of God (Bob Kauflin)

Hope For Backsliders

“Is there any word to me a backslider, a grievous revolter, that many times after vows have made inquiry? My promises and resolutions have been but paper walls before the fire of temptation? Are you afflicted with this and would have relief? ‘Behold,’ he says, Jer. iii.22, ‘Return ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.’ Hos. xiv.4, ‘I will heal your backslidings and love you freely. I will be as the dew of Israel.’ Hath he said so? Then let your heart say, Lord, ‘Do as thou hast said?’” (Ralph Erskine, “Faith’s Plea Upon God’s Word,” The Works of Ralph Erskine, vol. 2).

MISSIONS--So The World May Be Filled With His GLORY!

"No, it isn't for lack of money that there are 1,568 peoples with no missionaries. It is because we have so much. The comforts of the West have made us soft and cautious and fearful and indulgent and self-protecting, instead of tough and risk-taking and bold and self-controlled and self-sacrificing. . . . . . .Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. The glory of God is the ultimate goal of the church—because it's the ultimate goal of God. The final goal of all things is that God might be worshiped with white-hot affection by a redeemed company of countless persons from every tribe and tongue and people and nation (Revelation 5:9; 7:9). Missions exists because worship doesn't. When the kingdom finally comes in glory, missions will cease. Missions is penultimate; worship is ultimate. If we forget this and reverse their roles, the passion and the power for both diminish." --John Piper

Our Identity Is In The Gospel

I have lived long enough to learn from experience that if I am not actively finding my identity in the gospel, I will find it somewhere else. There is never a moment where I am not locating my identity in something. If I’m not locating it in God’s gospel, I will seek to be defined by something that was never meant to define me. We were not created in the image of vocational success, sexual fulfillment, money, or any other good yet created thing. No, we were created in the image of God and God alone; and although the image of God in man was profoundly defaced by sin, it is renewed in us by the power of the gospel. Only in the gospel is our God-given identity renewed and restored. Without the gospel we leave ourselves no other alternative but to live as if we were created in the image of some finite thing-something that ultimately has no life-stabilizing weight. (Daniel Cruver)

Perspectives

"Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his followers except the adoption of Christ's purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of his eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ's undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards." --J. Campbell White (1909)

Hudson Taylor on The Christian Life

“If God has called you to be really like Jesus in your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility, and put on you such demands of obedience that He will not allow you to follow other Christians; and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things that He will not let you do. Other Christians and ministers who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires and work schemes to carry out their schemes, but you cannot do it; and if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent. Others may brag on themselves, on their work, on their success, on their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing; and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works. Others may be allowed to succeed in making money, but it is likely that God will keep you poor, because He wants you to have something far better than gold, and that is helpless dependence upon Him, that He may have the privilege (the right) of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury. The Lord will let others be honoured and put forward, and keep you hidden away in obscurity, because He wants some choice fragrant fruit for His coming glory which can only be produced in the shade. He will let others do a work for Him and get the credit for it, but He will let you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you have done, and this will make your reward ten times greater when Jesus comes. The Holy Spirit will put a watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings or for wasting your time, over which other Christians never seem distressed. So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has the right to do as He pleases with His own, and He may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you. He will take you at your word and if you absolutely sell yourself to be His slave, He will wrap you up in a jealous love and let other people say and do many things which He will not let you say or do. Settle it for ever that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that He does not deal with others. Now when you are so possessed with the Living God, that you are in your secret heart pleased and delighted over the peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven.”

Where Are The Preachers--Where Are The Men?

"I do not look for any other means of converting men beyond the simple preaching of the gospel and the opening of men's ears to hear it. The moment the Church of God shall despise the pulpit, God will despise her. It has been through the ministry that the Lord has always been pleased to revive and bless His Churches . . . We want again Luthers, Calvins, Whitefields, men fit to mark eras, whose names breathe terror in our foe's ears. We have dire need of such. Whence will they come to us? They are the gifts of jesus Christ to the Church, and will come in due time. He has power to give us back again a golden age of preachers, a time as fertile of great divines and mighty ministers as the Puritan age, and when the good old truth is once again more preached by men whose lips are touched as with a live coal from off the altar, this shall be the instrument in the hand of the Spirit for bringing about a great and thorough revival of religion in the land." -----C. H. Spurgeon

The Doctor's Prescription (Martyn Lloyd-Jones)

The first thing our Lord said of us was, 'Ye are the salt of the earth'; and it is only after this that He says, 'Ye are the light of the world'. Why does He put it in that order instead of the reverse? . . . Scripture, in dealing with the Christian, always emphasizes first what he is, before it begins to speak of what he does. . . . Far too often we Christians tend to reverse the order. We have spoken in a very enlightened manner, but we have not always lived as the salt of the earth. Whether we like it or not, our lives should always be the first thing to speak; and if our lips speak more than our lives it will avail very little. So often the tragedy has been that people proclaim the gospel in words, but their whole life and demeanour has been a denial of it. The world does not pay much attention to them. Let us never forget this order deliberately chosen by our Lord: 'the salt of the earth' before 'the light of the world'. We are something before we begin to act as something. The two things should always go together, but the order and sequence should be the one which He sets down here.

Quote of The Week

“Jesus has many who love his kingdom in heaven , but few who bear his cross. He has many who desire comfort , but few who desire suffering. He finds many to share his feast, but few his fasting. All desire to rejoice with him , but few are willing to suffer for his sake. Many follow Jesus to the breaking of bread, but few to the drinking of the cup of his passion. Many admire the miracles but few follow him to the humiliation of his cross. Many love Jesus as long as no hardship touches them… They who love Jesus for his own sake, and not for the sake of the comfort for themselves , bless him in every trial and anguish of heart, no less than in the greatest joy. And were he never willing to bestow comfort on them, they would still always praise him and give him thanks.” Thomas a Kempis

Preaching & Preachers

Alistair Begg writes: “I remain fascinated by the variety of approaches that preachers take in preparing their sermons. In our preparation, as well as in our delivery we must ‘to our own selves be true.’ When I am asked to summarise my method of preparation, I mention the following points, which I learned from the late Leith Samuel…. 1. Think yourself empty. As strange as it may sound, we must be careful to ensure that we do not avoid sound thinking. The temptation to respond emotionally to a passage (this is how this makes me feel) is not unique to our listeners. If we are to have ‘thinking’ congregations it is incumbant upon us to be ‘thinking’ pastors’! We do not want to be uncertain by the time our study ends, but it is surely right and proper to begin with the perspective, ‘I must know what this says, and I must learn what this means.’ 2. Read yourself full. 3. Write yourself clear. Aside from the essential empowering of the Holy Spirit, if there is one single aspect of sermon preparation that I would want to emphasise, it is this. Freedom of delivery in the pulpit depends upon careful organisation in the study. We may believe that we have a grasp of the text, only to stand up and discover that somewhere between our thinking and our speaking things have gone badly awry. The missing link can usually be traced back to the absence of putting our thoughts down clearly. 4. Pray yourself hot. There is no chance of fire in the pews if there is an iceberg in the pulpit! Without prayer and communion with God during the preparation stages, the pulpit will be cold. In 1752 John Shaw reminded the incumbent pastor beginning his charge in Cambridge, Massachusetts: ‘All will be in vain, to no saving purpose, until God is pleased to give the increase. And in order to do this, God looks for prayers to come up to His ears. A praying minister is always the way to have a succesful ministry.” 5. Be yourself, but don’t preach yourself. A good teacher, like John the Baptist, clears the way, declares the way, and then gets out of the way.”

Theological Thought of The Week

From R. C. Sproul: "The great misconception in our day is this: that God isn’t concerned to protect His own integrity. He’s a kind of wishy-washy deity, who just waves a wand of forgiveness over everybody. No. For God to forgive you is a very costly matter. It cost the sacrifice of His own Son. So valuable was that sacrifice that God pronounced it valuable by raising Him from the dead – so that Christ died for us, He was raised for our justification. So the Gospel is something objective. It is the message of who Jesus is and what He did. And it also has a subjective dimension. How are the benefits of Jesus subjectively appropriated to us? How do I get it? The Bible makes it clear that we are justified not by our works, not by our efforts, not by our deeds, but by faith – and by faith alone. The only way you can receive the benefit of Christ’s life and death is by putting your trust in Him – and in Him alone. You do that, you’re declared just by God, you’re adopted into His family, you’re forgiven of all of your sins, and you have begun your pilgrimage for eternity."

THE PURITANS & THEIR SPIRITUAL WISDOM

About John Owen

Owen was by common consent the weightiest Puritan theologian, and many would bracket him with Jonathan Edwards as one of the greatest Reformed theologians of all time. Born in 1616, he entered Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of twelve and secured his M.A. in 1635, when he was nineteen. In his early twenties, conviction of sin threw him into such turmoil that for three months he could scarcely utter a coherent word on anything; but slowly he learned to trust Christ, and so found peace. In 1637 he became a pastor; in the 1640s he was chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and in 1651 he was made Dean of Christ Church, Oxford's largest college. In 1652 he was given the additional post of Vice-Chancellor of the University, which he then reorganized with conspicuous success. After 1660 he led the Independents through the bitter years of persecution till his death in 1683. (by J.I. Packer)
QUOTES FROM JOHN OWEN

"Your state is not at all to be measured by the opposition that sin makes to you, but by the opposition you make to it."

"Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death."

"Temptations and occasions put nothing into a man, but only draw out what was in him before."

“Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you”

I AM PROUD TO BE A WELSHMAN

Yes, I am Welsh or at least better than half of me is. My maternal grandparents immigrated to Utica, New York from Wales. Add their genes to my gene pool along with some more of those rascally Welsh genes from my father's side of the bloodline and I'm as much Welsh as anything else. I am proud to be a Welshman for the simple reason that some of the greatest preachers who ever proclaimed the Gospel were Welsh. Men like Howell Jones, Christmas Evans, and later Martyn Lloyd-Jones are all hero's of mine. In fact it was Lloyd-Jones who described the Welshman best from an Englishman's perspective: "The Englishman looks upon the Welshman as a rebel, an awkward individualist, as a man who always wants his own way and is perpetually creating totally uncalled for difficulties." Some would say, that's me!

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Friday, April 12, 2019

The Bible--Its Not All About Us!

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