Do not hold back
October 25, 2007
FPC’s 52nd annual World Mission Conference begins tomorrow. The Rev. Les Newsom, RUF campus minister at the University of Mississippi, will be the main speaker (pray that he will be able to speak in spite of throat and respiratory problems!). Below is the exhortation I gave last Thursday evening at a well-attended special prayer meeting for the conference. It contains some thoughts on our theme “Do Not Hold Back”.
“Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; do not hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities.”
Isaiah 54:2-3
Before going off to Ceylon [Sri Lanka], William Carey made and mended shoes. He also took a few hours of the day to teach some local school children. The students of William Carey’s geography class sometimes saw their teacher weep as he pointed on the map, marked with shoe black, to distant continents, islands and peoples. “And these are pagans, pagans!” he would say.
On May 31, 1792 in Nottingham, England, Carey preached a sermon which has been called ‘a burning bush of missionary revelation.’ He preached from Isaiah 54:2-3 and uttered a resounding plea that the gospel be proclaimed throughout the world. Carey’s message is summed up in these words: “Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.”
Carey was bold, wasn’t he? But he understood the Messianic promises, and he understood how to respond to those promises. The opposition of some who claimed they were being faithful to the doctrines of grace was shameful. Carey said,
‘We are sure that only those who ordained to eternal life will believe, and that God alone can add to the church such as shall be saved. Nevertheless we cannot but observe with admiration that Paul, the great champion for the glorious doctrines of free and sovereign grace, was the most conspicuous for his personal zeal in the work of persuading men to be reconciled to God.’
We need to hear that message once more. We need to see the picture the Lord set forth by Isaiah: the desolate woman bearing children, her tent being enlarged, her descendants spreading in every direction and inhabiting the desolate cities. We are wrong if we see its fulfillment only in the return of the exiles from Babylon. This is a Messianic promise. We need to see that the architect of the expansion of the kingdom is our Maker and that for good reason he is called the God of all the earth.
We need these promises of God’s unfailing love and unconquerable purpose so that we will not be afraid and hold back. Standing on these promises we will not fear our neighbor who needs to hear about Christ. We will not fear the forces that wage war against God and his Word. We will not fear Islam or secularism. We will not count our Savior to be too small and too weak to conquer the world.
Assured that our Maker is our husband, that the Holy One of Israel is our Redeemer, we must go ahead and enlarge the tent, to stretch the canopy wide, to lengthen the ropes and strengthen the stakes. Confident that the Lord Almighty is God of all the earth we must not hold back in our efforts to proclaim his message to all. God is declaring here that we may expect great things from him. Let’s also be ready to ask, “But am I holding back?”
While we in the means are found
October 24, 2007
I judge a hymnal on “The Newton Scale.” When I look at an unfamiliar hymnal, the first thing I do is thumb my way to the index to see how many (and which) hymns by John Newton are contained therein. It’s a pretty good indicator of the kind of piety the editors want to encourage. Newton’s hymns are, well, let me borrow the words of Kenny Bania, “That’s gold, Jerry! Gold!” Among Newton’s best are:
- Amazing Grace
- Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder
- Day of Judgment! Day of Wonders!
- How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds
- Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken
- Approach My Soul, the Mercy Seat
- Safely Through Another Week
The old Gadsby Hymnal has many Newton compositions. Certainly, some of these are not of the same calibre as the aforementioned classics (Does anyone remember Harlem Shuffle by the Rolling Stones, for example?). But below is a mighty good one from Newton. It is a prayer for the Spirit’s power to be unleashed in the ordinary means of grace, with 1 Corinthians 12:6-11 and 1:5 as a heading:
1 O thou, at whose almighty word
The glorious light from darkness sprung,
Thy quickening influence afford,
And clothe with power the preacher’s tongue.
2 ‘Tis thine to teach him how to speak;
‘Tis thine to give the hearing ear;
‘Tis thine the stubborn heart to break
And make the careless sinner fear.
3 ‘Tis also thine, Almighty Lord,
To cheer the poor, desponding heart;
To speak the soul-reviving word
And bid the mourner’s fears depart.
4 Thus, while we in the means are found,
We still on thee alone depend
To make the gospel’s joyful sound
Effectual to the promised end.
Thank you, John Newton.
Book review: The Dawkins Letters
October 18, 2007
After spending days sifting through all the kind comments from my birthday last week, it’s time to get back to blogging…today a book review:
There is a resurgent, muscular, in-your-face brand of atheism running about these days, especially evident on the bookshelves and best-sellers lists, where one can find Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Sam Harris’ The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Bennett. But the ideological alpha male amongst today’s atheist authors is Richard Dawkins, whose book The God Delusion has enjoyed a lengthy stay on the New York Times’ Bestsellers List.
Now perhaps you’re not dealing with aggressive atheists in your life right now. I must admit that Kosciusko is no hotbed of such ideas (In fact, at a county ministerial association meeting earlier this week, I discovered that no one at the meeting had even heard of any of the aforementioned books!) . Having said that, let me recommend a short book (125 pages in pocket-sized paperback) that lets you in on the discussion with intelligent, thoughtful Christian responses to the atheistic arguments (specifically interacting with Dawkins’ The God Delusion): David Robertson’s The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths (Ross-shire: Christian Focus, 2007).
David Robertson is minister of St. Peter’s Free Church, Dundee, Scotland (the same church Robert Murray M’Cheyne pastored in the 19th century). Robertson read The God Delusion and then decided to post an open letter to Richard Dawkins on the St. Peter’s website. Soon Robertson’s letter found its way onto Dawkins’ own website, where it elicited an enormous amount of response. As a result, Robertson expanded his critique into the ten letters which compose The Dawkins Letters.
Each of the ten letters addresses a myth that forms the basis for Dawkins’ appeals. What makes Dawkins’ arguments especially contemptible is that these myths (such as the “cruel” Old Testament God, the inherent evil of religion, the immoral Bible, the conflict between science and religion, higher consciousness among atheists) are presented under the guise of science, rationalism and empirical study. What is presented as reason is actually an appeal to anti-religious prejudice. Again and again Robertson points out the contradictions and hypocrisy evident in the atheists’ claims. Particularly strong is his response to Dawkins’ accusation that the religious education of children is a form of child abuse more harmful than the sexual abuse of children.
The final chapter in the book is a wonderful, serious, and warm-hearted explanation of why he believes that Christianity is true and why you should believe. Reading The Dawkins Letters will open your mind to some current issues and equip you to answer challenges without fear or embarrassment.
You can view a ten-minute video Robertson has produced which summarizes his point of view here.
Whether we are elected
October 10, 2007
We are not saved because we believe that we are elect; rather, we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Listen to the counsel of the Second Helvetic Confession:
We therefore find fault with those who outside of Christ ask whether they are elected. And what has God decreed concerning them before all eternity? For the preaching of the Gospel is to be heard, and it is to be believed; and it is to be held as beyond doubt that if you believe and are in Christ, you are elected. For the Father has revealed unto us in Christ the eternal purpose of his predestination, as I have just now shown from the apostle in II Tim. 1:9-10. This is therefore above all to be taught and considered, what great love of the Father toward us is revealed to us in Christ. We must hear what the Lord himself daily preaches to us in the Gospel, how he calls and says: “Come to me all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Also, “It is not the will of my Father that one of these little ones should perish” (Matt. 18:14).
Let Christ, therefore be the looking glass, in whom we may contemplate our predestination. We shall have a sufficiently clear and sure testimony that we are inscribed in the Book of Life if we have fellowship with Christ, and he is ours and we are his in true faith.
The Word did everything
October 5, 2007
A gem from Martin Luther appeared yesterday on the excellent blog The Shepherd’s Scrapbook.
“I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philipp and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.”
There is great irony here, as I sit in my study to finish some necessary, albeit unfinished, tasks on my day off. And it gives me some ideas for the rest of the day…
I’ve read my Bible today–now what?
October 3, 2007
I want people to read the Bible. I encourage our congregation to adopt a plan to read through it each year and provide model for doing so. BUT I must also urge others and myself not to read a few chapters and walk away, having fulfilled a dry duty.
Making the blog rounds these days are a set of seven questions from Dr. T. David Gordon–questions to assist you in meditating on the Word of God and making it more profitable in your life. At the end I will provide an additional question:
1. What does this passage of scripture reveal about God for which he is to be adored or praised?
2. What does this passage of scripture reveal about God for which he is to be thanked?
3. What does this passage reveal about my duty to love God?
4. What does this passage reveal about my duty to love my neighbor?
5. What does this passage reveal about my duty to love a brother or sister in Christ?
6. Does this passage expose my sin, so that there is something specific for which I need to repent, in thought, word, or deed?
7. Does this passage expose my sin, so that there is something specific for which I must be watchful, lest I sin in thought, word, or deed?
AND, let me add one more:
8. How does this passage help me see and savor the Lord Jesus Christ?
