Archive for June, 2009
5 Stipulations: What It Takes to Be a Bible Student
Ever wonder what it takes to be a Bible student?
I mean to become someone who can crack open the New Testament and grow in faith and understanding?
Someone who can crawl through the Old Testament and feel his spirit rise?
If so, then you probably need to know that there are certain stipulations to being a bible student.
Here are five. Take a look and see how you measure up:
1. Are you born again? Do you have the mind of Christ? Are you spiritual? 1 Corinthians 2:14-16
2. Do you long for the Word of God so you can grow in your salvation? 1 Peter 2:2
3. Do you long to examine the Scriptures to see what your pastor says is true? Acts 17:11
4. Are you striving to be holy? 1 Peter 1:14-16
5. Are you filled with the Holy Spirit? Ephesians 5:18
Naturally, the first question is the most important.
Why? If you’ve never invited Jesus Christ to be your personal Lord and savior of your life, then Satan’s blinded your mind to God’s truth.
See, you can read the Bible. Study it. Discuss it.
You might even be able to articulate atonement, predestination and the life, death and resurrection of Jesus in a meaningful way.
But one thing you can’t do: Embrace Jesus Christ as the redeemer of sinful mankind who bore God’s wrath for your sin.
So, while a study of the Bible might inform your mind, it will never descend into a transformation of your heart. Thus, you resist the simple, unapologetic truth of the Bible and never become a true student of it.
If you fall into this category, Christ is your need. He is your only hope. And not only for a fruitful Bible study. But for a divine rescue operation.
Confess your sins to God and ask him to forgive you right now. Once you do, the beautiful story of redemptive history found in the Bible will unfold for you.
And that’s a promise.
God’s Transcendence: Why You Should Care
**Part of The Nature of God series.**
Let me ask you a question: How do you explain America’s spectacular moral slide?
I mean, we’re just over 200 years old and it seems like the boat capsized.
Is there anything else like it in history? Possibly.
But in such a short time? And how do we explain this dramatic dive into immorality?
I think I might have the answer. Let me explain.
Astounding Reactions
When men encounter God, the result is always the same: an abrupt and acute kowtow. There is no second guessing:
Isaiah dreaded the confrontation with God: “Woe is me, for I am ruined!”
Saul, struck blind, begged: “Who are you, Lord?”
Daniel slumped: “Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength.”
What caused these reactions? God’s transcendence.
What Does Transcendence Mean?
When we say that God is transcendent, we are saying that God is exalted far above the created universe. So far above that human thought can’t touch it.
As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9
We’re not concerned with location. Nor altitude. We’re concerned with life. A person. A being who’s essence is existence.
Using an Imagined Monster to Explain Existence
There is something about objects of worship–whether man, self or sun–that we miss: something had to create the objects.
Nothing can not create something. So, the universe as we know it can’t be eternal. It needs a cause.
But that which caused it has to be something entirely different from that which was created. This is where Thomas Aquinas was headed in “On Being and Essence.”
From our existence we can know something about God, namely, that he exists. He has to, otherwise where did humans, the earth or the universe start? We’ll think like a theist when we say, if God created us, then his essence must be something entirely different from us.
How is it different? In people, essence and existence are two different things.
What do I mean by that? Just because a child can imagine a fierce, thick-boned, child-hating monster doesn’t mean that the monster is real. It’s existence is separate from what it is–its essence.
God’s essence, on the other hand, is existence. In other words, he is self-existent.
And God can’t create himself, because that implies that nothing [which is the state of God before he created himself if he once never existed] can create God.
Because of this distinction, God is utterly different than you or I. We are different–our existence and essence is separate. Why? We can die. God can not. In other words, God is transcendent. He is the Other.
But he’s involved in this universe. He sustains it. The ultimate culmination of God’s presence in this universe is Christ. Christ provides the bridge between God and man. Between the limitless and the limited.
The Controversy Over the Mind
Naturally, not all people agree God exists–let alone transcendent. And some materialists will object to the idea that a mind could exist separate from the body.
I disagree. Here are four proofs that the mind does exist apart from the body:
- No real proof that my mind is a function of my brain.
- Just because my mind and brain work together doesn’t mean they’re identical.
- We commit the reductionist fallacy when we reduce my mind to my brain.
- How could I know I was more than my brain unless I was more than it?
Imagine if your child got lost in a crowded mall. I bet you would abandon every single shopping bag to find that child.
The bags full of stuff can’t love or laugh or speak or pray. It is the child’s quality of being that gives it worth. It is soul that gives significance to matter.
Which brings me to my original question: how do we explain America’s moral slide. The answer is easy. We’ve lost the fear of God.
What the Strangeness of God Can Do for Us
Contemporary men have found that in order to indulge themselves in their vices, they need to do away with God. Moreover, the history of evangelism has made that shift easy.
In the early 20th Century the Gospel of the Cross was abandoned for the Gospel of Life Enhancement: Jesus will make your life easier. Lost in translation is God’s transcendence–his strangeness to us.
That strangeness comes to us as a healthy respect of our Creator, a healthy worship for our redeemer and a healthy fear of him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. We’ve lost the value of God’s eternal wrath. We acknowledge his kindness but dismiss his severity. This makes it easier for us to dismiss God.
Finding Comfort in God’s Transcendence
Charles Hodge once said, “The infinitude of God, so far as space is concerned, includes his immensity and his omnipresence…He is equally present with all his creatures, at all times, and in all places. He is not far from any one of us.”
God’s transcendent holiness is biblically balanced with the teaching of his immanence. This means God is wholly present in his being and power in every part and moment of the created universe.
This is seen especially in relation to humans. The Holy One who lives in a high and holy place also dwells with the “contrite and lowly in spirit.” And this is seen in the very physical visit to his creation in the person of Jesus Christ.
My Stint with Suicide [or Four People Who Nearly Killed Me]
This is the counter anti-post to Six Pastors Who Influenced Me. The ugly post, if you will.
And “killing” might be too strong. But hear me out before you chew me out.
Moses Jynweythek [not real name]: Cocksure and rugged friend who introduced me to late night drinking binges on school nights, reckless joy rides over narrow country roads and foolhardy fun at the hands of merciless drugs.
[The point: I was adequately softened to absorb the following influences.]
Sartre: When I was 20, through his novel Nausea, Sartre introduced me to ennui and bad faith. Still gunnin’ it down country roads, I lived out the fatalistic destiny of a meaningless, boring existence.
Camus: Through Myth of Sysiphus, Camus introduced me to the only philosophical question worth answering: Suicide or not? For this addict to purposelessness, Camus was permission to slit wrists. [As tempting as it sounds, I never did.]
Kurt Cobain: What can I say? Cobain was a hero to me. From his first album Bleach to his death five years later. But his suicide devastated me to deep, dark degrees.
Note: I seemed to escape the jaws of fatalism, hedonism and alcoholism after someone “led me to the Lord” around the end of 1996.
But this conversion amounted to nothing more than behavior modification–I shed some bad habits and picked up some good habits. In retrospect, I can see that there was something still dreadfully wrong: I cared about nothing else but me, myself and I.
Thus, suicide still dogged me.
It wasn’t until God peeled back the blinders to my sin–using difficult circumstances and bold preachers–that I truly emerged from the power of these influences.
So, while Moses, Sartre, Camus or Cobain may not have actually tried to murder me, their ideas and lifestyles proved sufficient to smother me.
That’s why I thank God today for bold men and women who proclaim the hard truth of the Gospel. The hard truth that overcomes the philosophy and culture of death and darkness, lies and deceit.
The hard truth that radiates with light and life–both in this life and the life to come.
How the Conquered Storm Points to Christ
Every so often I hear a story about someone drowning in the ocean. A child dragged to her death by the undertow.
That’s why my wife and I give ample, rigid warning to our own children when we visit the ocean:
“Hold our hands tight.”
Our last two visits to the ocean–the Atlantic and the Gulf–occurred just days after hurricanes bull rushed the coast. So winds remained fierce. Waves, relentless. We barely even set foot into the sea.
The Storm Descending on the Boat
Similar circumstances–gale-like winds, wall-like waves–were common on another sea. The Sea of Galilee.
Long ago Jesus and his disciples were on the western shore of this sea. Jesus wanted to escape the crush of the crowd. So he and his disciples climbed into a boat. They sailed to the eastern shore where there was no large city, thus fewer people.
But at some point during their trip a severe storm pushed its way across the sea. Jesus’ disciples–aware of what could happen if trapped in such a storm–feared they would drown.
Jesus, on the other hand, slept.
Eventually his disciples woke him up. They pointed to the storm and screamed, “We’re going to die!” And what happened next demonstrates Jesus’ unlimited power over the natural world.
The Storm Subdued by a Man
Storms don’t die quickly. Nor on cue from a human command. Yet, on that day, Jesus immediately muzzled the storm with the words, “Hush, be still.” And when the storm ceased, the disciples’ hearts sank. Not in sadness nor relief.
But terror.
Terror that something more powerful than a boat-crushing, human-drowning force was in the boat with them. And it was this terror that precipitated the question, “Who is this that the wind and the sea obey him?”
The Conquered Storm Points to Christ
This story of the sea being stilled occurred well before Peter’s confession that Jesus was Christ.
In Mark, it occurs after Jesus heals many people of illness, deformities and demon possession. Thus, this story of the sea being stilled rises in the Markian narrative above all supernatural events before it and culminates with the question, “Who is this?”
It’s like a primer for the ultimate question: “Who do you say that I am?”
At that point in Mark 8:29…is there any question who Jesus is? Any resistance? Any doubt to his authority over sin and death? Jesus cast out demons. Restored mangled limbs. Cured lingering diseases. Lifted children from the dead. And subdued the sea.
The Storm Submitted–Will You?
Of course, doubters existed. Judas was more than likely in the boat. And doubters exist today.
Why did Judas doubt? Why do people doubt today? Here’s a clue: “For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”
This is what breaks my heart: In the face of mounting evidence to the authority of Christ, people who reject Jesus needlessly incite God’s wrath and judgment against themselves.
In the end, Jesus offers two ways: Submit to his power. Or suffer under it. There is no middle ground.
**Part of The Messiah: Eleven Meditations from the Book of Mark series.**
A Perfect Illustration of What Christ Did for Us
I confess: Navigating through the nature of God at times leaves me feeling detached and remote.
Far off from God.
Granted, you can’t put your finger on infinity. Eternality. Self-existence.
These topics at first blush are unbelievably impractical, impersonal, ineffable and intimidating.
No wonder Job once argued that there was no arbitrator between man and God:
“In truth I know that this is so; But how can a man be in the right before God? If one wished to dispute with Him, he could not answer Him once in a thousand times.” Job 9:2-3
It’s at these times when a story like Doug Wilson’s Teacher illustration brings the sheer practicality of God and redemptive history home for me.
In a recent video John Piper shares the illustration in question. It’s an illustration on the difference between good advice and good news.
For those to lazy to watch the video [I sometimes fall into this category], let me summarize the illustration.
Picture a young man before his trigonometry teacher. It’s the first day of class. He’s anxious about passing. She gives him advice on how to succeed: Study hard. Memorize your tables. Do your homework.
He follows her advice. However, at the end of the semester, at the final exam, this young man is hunched over a blank piece of paper.
The teacher passes, notices the blank paper. More good advice looks like this: Relax. Answer the easy questions first. Build off of those. Think harder.
On the other hand, good news look like this: The teacher says, “Scoot over. I’ll take the exam for you.”
That illustration characterizes the gospel. The climax of redemptive history. And it distinguishes between good advice and good news.
It also articulates what’s meant by propitiation, substitutionary atonement, justification by faith alone.
And it reminds of us of the solid ground we stand on. It will be Christ’s righteousness–not our own–that is going to count for us on Judgment day.
In the end, Wilson’s illustrations is an image of the vivid, concrete anchor we have in Christ. The flesh and blood hope we have in the face of an unfathomable, holy God. And the compelling vision that stirs our soul to worship, work for and wonder at him who loved us so much that he sent his only son to die for us.
It grounds us in the spiritual reality that sometimes eludes us. Please share the story.
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