Meditation on the Text of the Week

Once Was Blind, But Now I See

Let the sea roar; and all that fill it;
The world and those who dwell in it!
Let the rivers clap their hands;
Let the hills sing for joy together
Before the Lord, for he comes
To judge the earth.
Psalm 98: 7-9

The biblical perspective on the Creation is that first and foremost it belongs to God and exists for His glory.  The inspired psalmist confirms that the entire creation sings hymns of glory to God.  These hymns are heard first by Him.  They are unto Him; His ears reverberate to the glorious orchestra and choir.

The trees, the grasses, the seas and all that is in them, the animals and birds, the sun and the moon–they all sing to God’s glory.  When we see them and rejoice in the glory of this created world we see what non-Christian folk struggle to comprehend–we comprehend that the Creation is singing to God and the magnification of His glory before it sings to us.  That makes the Creation even more glorious to our eyes and ears.

If we are listening to a choir singing we may be profoundly moved by the beauty of the music.  When we realise that the beauty is first heard by God Himself, appreciated by Him, and loved by Him before it is known and appreciated by us, the glory of the music becomes more weighty, more significant, more holy.  The services of the choir become all the more valuable in our eyes.
 

When the vast rollers break upon the shore, their loud roaring trumpets in celebration of the glory of God.  The world is clapping God, its Creator.  The glory of the purple hills at sunset is a song of joy raised to God. And because they magnify Him, the hills become even more precious to us, their beauty more sacred.  These are things which the Christian sees and knows.  He sees more than Christless eyes.

Heaven above is softer blue
Earth around is sweeter green;
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen
Birds with gladder songs o’erflow
Flowers with deeper beauties shine
Since I know, as now I know,
I am His, and He is mine

Meditation on the Text of the Week

Children, Dogs, and Crumbs

For many years we have both loved and identified with the woman spoken of in Matthew 15: 21–28.  In the first place she was a rank outsider, a truly inferior person.  She was a woman, and Pharisaic Judaism stipulated that a man ought not to talk to a woman in public.  It was sinful and shameful.  Some rabbis even said this stricture must extend even to one’s wife. 

Secondly, she was a Gentile–one of the hated ones.  But, this means nothing. we hear you say.  Our Lord did not care whether one was a Gentile or a Jew–He was without such carnal prejudices.  Did He not declare that He came to call the Gentiles; did He not bring salvation to the Samaritan woman at the well?  True, but in the Gospel of Matthew our Lord is constantly referring to the Gentiles as evil people, whose contemptible practices were to be avoided at all costs. (Matthew 6:7, 32, for example).

Jesus had withdrawn and taken His disciples north, towards the coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon.  There they encountered this Canaanite woman, possibly of Philistine descent, a member of a cursed race and culture.
  She cried to our Lord for help, not for herself, but for her daughter who had become a plaything of demons.  Her terms of address to the Christ imply that she understood something of the significance of the One before her.  He calls Him, “Lord”, and “Son of David”.  Moreover, she utters the “magic word”.  She asks for mercy.

In almost every other case recorded in the Gospels, when someone came up to Jesus and besought His mercy–no matter who they were–our Lord gave them His full, undivided attention and ministered to them.  But not this time.  He ignored her.  He had taken on the demeanour of a Pharisaic Jew.  Had not his father, David been a great friend and ally to the people of Tyre and Sidon?  But not the son.  This strange story is unexpected and perplexing.

The disciples immediately sided with their Lord.  They quickly became fed up with her following and crying out.  So irritating. So shameful.  They also besought the Lord, but their request was that He got rid of the noisome annoyance.  Jesus’ response is perplexing.  He appears to side with the disciples, confirming their prejudices.  “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” He said–in a voice sufficiently loud that the woman overheard.  But what subsequently transpired shows that all along He was watching her, wanting to know how she would respond to the humiliating threefold rejection she had already suffered at their hands.

In the mind’s eye, we imagine our Saviour speaking to the disciples, but out of the corner of His eye, keenly watching what this nameless, insignificant, nothing-person would do.   Well, clothed in humility and lowliness she came directly to Him and knelt before Him, and begged simply and directly, “Lord, help me.”  Now, we tell ourselves, now, for sure, our merciful Lord will respond and help her.  Not so.  Instead, Jesus refuses, but He does so in the most insulting way.  He said, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” 

The “children” were the lost sheep of the house of Israel; the “dogs” were the Gentiles, like this woman.  Yet, four times rejected and refused, this wonderful lady persisted and pressed her case.  She humbly accepted His rebuke, but would not let it rest, instead, turning the rebuke into an argument for His help.  “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” 

This was not a mere clever, cheeky response.  She extended the metaphor and turned it to her favour.  Does not God send the rain upon the just and the unjust.  Does He not ceaselessly extend His good gifts and mercies to all mankind, including the grossest sinners.  “I may not be numbered amongst God’s chosen people,” she is saying, “but God also gives us Gentiles some of His kindness and love.”  That’s the profound general theological point that she was making, specifically applying it to her situation.  It was an argument that turned upon a deep faith in the goodness of God towards all men, even the most undeserving.

Our Lord had elicited what He sought. “O woman, great is your faith!  Be it done for you as your desire.”  The daughter was immediately healed. 

In the broadest context of redemptive history, this wonderful woman stands as a signal of the coming Kingdom of God.  Soon the Gospel of God’s saving mercy would extend and flow to all men, all nations, all tribes and peoples.  She was an avatar, a sign, a forerunner of what was about to unfold.  For those of us of Gentile stock, she is one of our great fore-runners in mercy, our mother in faith and salvation, as it were.  She entered the Kingdom before us, and her entrance showed us the way.  Even as she came and was accepted, so we have come. 

But this encounter also tells us much of how our Lord deals with us in our distresses.  The obstacles to securing relief are often many and persistent.  Many of these obstacles are even numbered in His Word: our pride, our lack of faith, our infidelity, our insignificance in the general scheme of things.  But, what is clear from this text is that whenever our Lord puts obstacles and objections to our receiving His help and mercy in our way, He is keenly watching us.  How will we respond?  He is looking for us to counter-argue with Him–naming before Him the greater promises of God, the greater mercies of God.  In fact, the more useless and pathetic we are, the more powerful our appeals to His mercy become.  This blessed woman shows us the way.  She used her weaknesses, her lack of entitlement to anything, to become a powerful argument, pleasing to our Lord.  The poor and the weak God does not despise.  That is written everywhere in Scripture.

Most gladly, says the apostle, I will glorify in my weaknesses that the power of Christ might rest upon me.  He may well have had this Canaanite woman in mind when he penned those words to the believers in Corinth and to us. 

Calvin’s Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

April 12

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Reproduced from the OPC Website

Bible Text:
Arise, O Lord, in thine anger, lift up thyself because of the rage of mine enemies: and awake for me to the judgment that thou hast commanded. My defence is of God, which saveth the upright in heart. —Psalm 7:6, 10

Devotional:
And, indeed, we can never pray in faith unless we attend, in the first place, to what God commands, that our minds may not rashly and at random start aside in desiring more than we are permitted to desire and pray for. David, therefore, in order to pray aright, reposes himself on the word and promise of God; and the import of his exercise is this: Lord, I am not led by ambition, or foolish headstrong passion, or depraved desire, inconsiderately to ask from thee whatever is pleasing to my flesh; but it is the clear light of thy word which directs me, and upon it I securely depend.

Is it not wonderful that David often mingles meditations with his prayers, thereby to inspire himself with true confidence?
We may go to God in prayer with great alacrity; but our fervor, if it does not gather new strength, either immediately fails or begins to languish. David, therefore, in order to continue in prayer with the same ardor of devotion and affection with which he commenced, brings to his recollection some of the most common truths of religion, and by this means fosters and invigorates his faith.

He declares that as God saves the upright in heart, he is perfectly safe under his protection. Whence it follows, that he had the testimony of an approving conscience. And as he does not simply say the righteous, but the upright in heart, he appears to have an eye to that inward searching of the heart and reins mentioned in the preceding verse. —Commentaries

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin’s Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.

Cavin’s Daily Devotional

Daily Devotional

April 19

Thine Is My Heart: Devotional Readings from the Writings of John Calvin

by John Calvin (compiled by John H. Kromminga)
Republished from the OPC Daily Devotional

Bible Text:
Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, —Philippians 3:13

Devotional:
… Depravity never ceases in us, but is perpetually producing new fruits —those works of the flesh which we have already described, like the emission of flarne and sparks from a heated furnace, or like the streams of water from an unfailing spring. For lust never dies, nor is altogether extinguished in men, till by death they are delivered from the body of death, and entirely divested of themselves.

Baptism, indeed promises us the submersion of our Pharaoh, and the mortification of sin; yet not so that it no longer exists, or gives us no further trouble; but only that it may never overcome us. For as long as we live immured in this prison of the body, the relics of sin will dwell in us; but if we hold fast by faith the promise which God has given us in baptism, they shall not domineer or reign over us.

But let no man deceive himself, let no one flatter himself in his guilt, when he hears that sin always dwells in us. These things are not said in order that those who are already too prone to do evil may securely sleep in their sins, but only that those who are tempted by their corrupt inclinations may not faint and sink into despondency; but that they may rather reflect that they are yet in the way, and may consider themselves as having made some progress, when they experience their corruptions diminishing from day to day, till they shall attain the mark at which they are aiming, even the final destruction of their depravity, which will be accomplished at the close of this mortal life.

In the meantime, let them not cease to fight manfully, to animate themselves to constant advances, and to press forward to complete victory. For it ought to give additional impulse to their exertions, to see that, after they have been striving so long, so much still remains for them to do. We conclude, therefore, that we are baptized into the mortification of the flesh, which commences in us at baptism, which we pursue from day to day, and which will be perfected when we pass out of this life to the Lord. —Institutes, IV, xv, xi

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John Calvin was the premier theologian of the Reformation, but also a pious and godly Christian pastor who endeavored throughout his life to point men and women to Christ. We are grateful to Reformation Heritage Books for permission to use John Calvin’s Thine Is My Heart as our daily devotional for 2013 on the OPC Web site. You can currently obtain a printed copy of that book from Reformation Heritage Books.
Dr. Joel Beeke, who is editorial director of Reformation Heritage Books, has this to say:

“Calvin shows us the piety of a Reformed theologian who speaks from the heart. Having tasted the goodness and grace of God in Jesus Christ, he pursued piety by seeking to know and do God’s will every day. He communed with Christ, practicing repentance, self-denial, and cross-bearing. Moreover, his theology worked itself out in heart-felt, Christ-honoring piety. The selections of this devotional bear this out, and hopefully will be used by God to direct pious hearts in our own day.”

These devotional readings from John Calvin were compiled by John H. Kromminga. Be sure to read his “Introduction” to John Calvin’s Thine Is My Heart.

Future Blessings Upon this Wonderful Planet

No Fool

[This post is re-published from Justin Taylor’s blog]

The best-known line of martyred missionary Jim Elliot is, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

In the archives at Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center you can view Elliot’s journals (published here.) Below is a picture of the page from his journal. (As the Archives note, the underline and asterisk was likely added later after he died.)

Christmas Meditation

A Theology of Christmas Gifts

Liturgy and Worship – Church Year
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, December 17, 2011

INTRODUCTION:
One of the most obvious features of our Christmas celebrations is the gift-giving. How are we to understand this as Christians? What are the pitfalls? Are all the pitfalls obvious? Because our lives are to be lives of grace, and because charis means grace or gift, this is something we have to understand throughout the course of our lives, and not just at Christmas. But it has to be said that the machinery of our consumer racket does throw the question into high relief for us at this time of year.

THE TEXT:
“And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh” (Mt 2:11).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT:
The first Christmas gifts were given by the magi to the young child Jesus. This happened sometime within the Lord’s first two years of life. Because three kinds of treasures are mentioned—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—it is often inferred that there were three wise men. There may have been, but we don’t know. What we do know is that the gifts were very costly.

SOME BACKGROUND:
Gentile wise men from the East sought out Jesus and they worshiped Him. The established rulers in Israel did not—in fact, Herod played the role here of a treacherous Pharaoh, going on to kill the young boys in the region of Bethlehem. We know what gold is, but what are frankincense and myrrh? They are both aromatic resins, harvested from different kinds of trees. Frankincense was often burned for its smell, and hence the smoke could signify prayer, ascending to God. Myrrh was used in burials (John 19:39), and Jesus was offered some mixed with wine on the cross, which He refused (Mark 15:23). It was associated with death. From the context of the magi’s visit, and the association with gold, we may infer that these were high end gifts. All three of these gifts were very expensive—in these verses, Matthew calls the gifts treasures.

NO EITHER/OR:
The relationship between God and your neighbor is not an either/or relationship. When it becomes that, it is the result of a sinful kind of dualism.
In any context where grace is necessary and called for, you can of course sin . . .
·    Through being a grump and begrudging the giving of gifts at all (John 12:5).
·    You can also sin by giving to your neighbor instead of to God (Rev. 11:10);
·    By giving to God instead of to your neighbor (Mark 7:11).

The way through, the real alternative, is to give to God by means of giving to your neighbor (Esther 9:22). Your neighbor bears the image of God. How can you give to God, who dwells in the highest heaven? You reach up by reaching down, or by reaching across. No gift given here in the right way goes missing in the final tally (Matt. 10:42). With every form of unrighteous mammon, you have the opportunity to extend grace to your fellow creatures, in the hope that they will receive you into glory (Luke 16:9). But every gift given here in the wrong spirit is just thrown into the bottomless pit, that ultimate rat hole (Luke 12:34; Jas. 5:3).

We see our relationship to God mirrored in our relationship to our neighbor. The state of the one reveals the state of the other. “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32). When the two great commandments are discussed, we are told that the second great commandment is “like unto” the first (Mark 12:31). The Scriptures are explicit on this point. “No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us” (1 Jn 4:12). “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 Jn. 4:20).

WHAT THIS DOES NOT MEAN:
This does not mean that we are to charge about aimlessly, buying and giving gifts willy-nilly. The grace of God is not stupid, so don’t give pointless gifts just to have done something. The grace of God was freely given, so don’t let a racket run by unscrupulous merchants extort money from you that you don’t have. At the same time, merchants are a form of grace to you. How does God get that daily bread to you (Matt. 6:11)? So don’t identify crowds with a racket. Crowds do provide an opportunity for pickpockets, but Jesus loved crowds and He fed them. He gave them gifts (Matt. 14:21).

COLD WATER & THE UNSPEAKABLE GIFT:
The best gift we can give one another at Christmas time is the best gift we can be giving to one another all the time—and that is the gift of gospel-saturated grace. Gospel means good news, and as I mentioned earlier how God keeps track of cold water gifts, we should always connect this with gospel. What has God given? Let us give the same way, and in the same spirit. “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country” (Prov. 25:25).

The Son of God from Heaven is the gospel from a far country. He is the gospel Himself; He is the good news. And we know that His contagious form of life has taken hold of us when we start gracing each other the same way that He graced us. Notice how the great vertical gift and horizontal gifts must be understood together.

“For the administration of this service not only supplieth the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God; Whiles by the experiment of this ministration they glorify God for your professed subjection unto the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal distribution unto them, and unto all men; And by their prayer for you, which long after you for the exceeding grace of God in you. Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift” (2 Cor. 9:12-15).

>The Glory and the Stumbling

>Why Do You Call That Day “Good”?

The Cross remains a stumbling block to Unbelief (Galatians 5:11). That is as it should be. It always will be. To Christians, however, the Cross remains our great boast and glory (Galatians 6:14). That, too, is as it should, and always will, be.

There are certain truths which immediately divide Belief and Unbelief. There is no common ground. No room for compromise. The Cross is one of those lodestones which separates the pure metal from the dross.

To the Unbeliever, the Cross is offensive because it testifies as an eloquent witness to mankind’s sinfulness, guilt, depravity, and moral worthlessness. It also testifies to God’s judgment upon sin; to His holiness; that He will not let sin go unpunished. It stands, therefore, as the instrument of universal condemnation upon the entire human race.

Faced with this divine testimony against mankind, Unbelief typically has two responses. The first is anger. The second is mockery. The anger rails against the primitiveness of the Cross, its bloodiness. It takes offence. How could anyone believe, yet alone glory, in something so violent, bloody, and negative!

The mockery assails Belief with epithets of ignorance, backwardness, credulity, and primitive stupidity. It puts belief in the Cross on a par with the tooth fairy.

It is significant that in the eighteenth century when academics and false teachers within the bosom of the Church itself began to attack God and His Christ they focused upon the Cross. They tried to make it more acceptable to Unbelief by “re-interpreting” it. These false teachers–wolves in sheep’s clothing–took up the offence of the Cross and sought to make it more acceptable to Unbelief.

The first thing was to assure everyone that the Cross was very, very important. But not for the reasons that the Apostles and the “one holy catholic and apostolic church” had thought. Rather, the Cross and Jesus upon it, we were told, was the most noble celebration of humanity. It spoke of purity of life, of steadfastness, faithfulness, integrity, and noble self-sacrifice. It demonstrated the “greater love”–the golden rule. Yes, the Cross saved–but not in the way once thought. It saved because it provided all men with the impelling, energizing moral example to which all could aspire. And in aspiring and achieving such moral nobility, we would be saved.

There is nothing unique about the Cross, we were told. After all, hundreds of thousands of people have died the death of crucifixion. What makes the Christian Cross so important was the moral example of the One who was dying upon it. Thus put, the Cross became not an emblem of shame, but a beacon of human potential, dignity and glory. It showed all mankind the way of salvation in that is provided a motivational example of human moral excellence. Blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately, there are still many who still lurk within the bosom of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church who thus teach, and who endeavour to put a Satanic sheen upon the Cross. Note them well: their goal is to attempt to remove the offensiveness of the Cross. Immediately the attempt is made they identify themselves as being like their father, the one who has been a liar from the beginning.

But God is not served by the lies of men. Trying to make the Cross less offensive to Unbelief can only proceed by denying what God has said about it. It is God Who has revealed, “the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:20). It is God Who has declared that on the Cross Jesus was bearing our sins in His body (I Peter 2:24). It is God Who has revealed that on the Cross, Christ became a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). It is God Who promised long before time that the guild of our iniquities would be laid upon Him and that by His grievous wounds we, His people, would be healed (Isaiah 53: 4-6).

Here, then, is why the Cross is so offensive to Unbelief and why its has borne centuries of egregious slurs and hateful epithets. If the death of Christ were a death for sinners; if He were bearing the sins of His people in their place on the Cross; if He were cursed in their place, then Unbelief itself must be evil, cursed, and under the wrath of God. Which is to say that all Unbelievers are, in God’s sight and holy judgment, evil, cursed and under His holy wrath. What Unbelief would dismiss as an unhistorical relic, God has put forth as the ultimate indictment of guilt.

But for Belief, whilst the Cross indicts and kills us all, it also makes us alive. For upon that Cross, the Saviour of the world bore the guilt of His sheep–His known and beloved people–in their place, so that they might be freed, forgiven, delivered, and saved. The Cross is God’s appointed way to redeem, or buy back the enslaved to sin, those who had been made captive to the Devil.

Thus, for Belief the Cross is our great glory. It manifests the greatest free love of God, His mercy, and His condescension. It is the immediate reason of our forgiveness by God, the Judge of the heavens and the earth. More than anything else, the Cross gives us a sure and certain hope. To us, the Cross does not mean death, but life–abundant and eternal life, for at the right hand of God there are pleasures ever more.

That is why the Church calls this day–the day of remembrance of our Lord’s death upon the Cross–Good Friday. Never was a day more aptly named.

And can it be, that I should gain
And interest in the Saviour’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain?
For me Who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love, how can it be,
That thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
–Charles Wesley

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>New Covenant Worship

And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures; and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying, “Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen.” Revelation 7: 11,12

One of the great problems facing the Church in our generation is the need to reform our public worship until it conforms more closely to biblical revelation and instruction. As with all sanctification, the Church needs to “put off” and “put on”. There are plenty of accretions which must be discarded because they do not conform with Scriptural teaching. But much has been lost from the Scriptures with respect to worship which must be recovered. This is no idle matter for public worship is the most important activity and duty of the Church.

In Revelation 7: 11,12 we have an picture of the Church in worship. This is worship in the heavenly throne room–but, lest any think that because it is the heavenly church’s liturgical practice which is here described it does not concern us who are yet serving upon the earth, let us remember that when we gather for worship here upon earth, in actuality we are taken up to the heavenly congregation. We participate in their worship; they do not participate in ours.

As it says in Hebrews 12: 22f we actually come to “Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant . . . .” The contrast with Mount Sinai could not be more sharp. When Israel fled Egypt then gathered to the mountain to worship, God came down to them. Now, we go up to God, because our Head has already gone up, ascended to God and He dwells there now. He is our mediator and High Priest. Therefore, when we worship we must first have Him standing at our head before God, even as the ancient Levitical high priest stood before the people at the entrance of the Holy of holies–which means that we must ascend to Him.

Now if any would demur, pointing out that our Lord said that when even two or three are gathered together in His Name, He would be in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20) they would be right. But why does our Lord come into our midst? What does He do? He comes to us, as the risen and ascended One, to lift us up that we might be where He is, in heaven (John 14: 2-3). His Spirit lifts us up into the heavenlies, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. He brings us into the presence of God the Father. (Note that the “coming again” that Jesus refers to repeatedly in His final discourse to the apostles before His passion in John chapters 14 through 16 is not a reference to His final Advent, as many assume, but to the coming of His Spirit at Pentecost, as the context clearly shows. The Spirit comes to raise us up to the Father. In the Spirit Christ comes to us to lift us up to be with Christ in the Father’s house.) That is why Paul commands us to set our hearts and minds on the things above. “If you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things which are on earth.” (Colossians 3: 1,2) Public worship, by taking us up into heaven to participate in the heavenly worship, helps us set our minds “on the things above”.

Herein lies one of the great divergences and differences between the Old Covenant and the New. In the Old Covenant the Church worshipped upon the earth, looking for God to come down and establish His Name somewhere, at a certain place. Israel had to repair there to appear before God. Now, in the New Covenant God has been able to establish His Name and place of worship in the heavens where He dwells, since the Redeemer has risen, ascended, and taken us all captive as His people into God’s presence. We are now holy enough to be there; we are welcomed with great joy because we are clothed with the Lamb’s righteousness.

This could not be done before under the Old Covenant, not just because atonement for sin had not yet been made, but because no perfect atoning Man as High Priest had been able to ascend into God’s presence to represent us, intercede for us, and gather us together into the very presence of God and present us there to God, perfect and holy.

Our worship upon earth now needs to be set in the light of our appearance thereby in heaven. Naturally, what we do here upon earth in public worship must be evocative of and patterned after the heavenly liturgy. We participate in their liturgy and worship, not the reverse. In this regard, David Chilton’s words are salutary in his exposition of Revelation 7: 11,12:

As in many other Biblical descriptions of worship. the position of the worshipers (in heaven) is noted here: They fell on their faces before the Throne. Official, public worship in Scripture never shows the participants sitting at prayer; public prayer is always performed in the reverential positions of standing or bowing down. The modern, nominalistic platonist, thinking himself to be fore spiritually-minded than Biblical characters (even angels!), would respond that the bodily position (in worship) is irrelevant, so long as the proper attitude is filling the heart. But this overlooks the fact that Scripture connects the attitude of the heart with the attitude of the body. In public worship, at the very least, our churches should follow the Biblical pattern of physical reverence in prayer. http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0930462092&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

When rationalistic Protestants abandoned the use of the kneeling rail in worship, the contributed to the outbreaks of individualistic pietism that have brought to much ruin to the Church. Man needs liturgy and symbolism. God created us that way. When the Church denies man this aspect of his God-given nature, he will seek to fulfill it by inadequate or sinful substitutes.

A return to Biblically based liturgy is not a cure-all; but it will prove to be a corrective to the shallow, frenetic, and misplaced “spirituality” that has been the legacy of centuries of liturgical poverty. David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Fort Worth, Tx: Dominion Press, 1987), p.219

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Let the Shaking Continue

 . . . as unknown, yet well-known, as dying yet behold, we live; as punished yet not put to death, as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things.  II Corinthians 6: 9–10

By the grace of God we now enter the two thousand and eleventh year of our Lord.  Each year brings the transitions inevitable in His Kingdom which has, at its root, a process of intergenerational succession.  And so it has been in the past year.  Beloved and respected believers have died and departed to be with our Lord.  Some of these have seemed to us to die full of life and years, with a long and fruitful career of faithful service to the King.  Others have died tragically insofar as they died young.  The tragedy lies not so much in death itself, which we know will, in the end, lose its sting.  It lies rather in the Kingdom of our Lord not having the benefit of long years of faithful service on the part of those who died untimely deaths.  But such tragedies call us to pray for others to be raised up in their place. 

And so, over the past year, we have also seen and experienced many births, as the Lord has granted an abundance of children.  These come forth into His Kingdom as servants of the Living God, baptized into the Name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Born to Christian parents, raised in Christian homes, they are surrounded and immersed in the means of grace from the time they take their first breath.  They are conditioned to believe and obey.  The Spirit of God uses these ordained conditions to convert them to turn away from sin and embrace the Lord Jesus Christ in a living faith. 

Moreover, over the past year, others, not raised in Christian homes, have heard the Gospel preached, and have believed and been converted out of darkness to light. They who were once afar off, have now been brought near.  And so, today, in the 2011th year of our Lord, the earth is more full of the glory of God than it was twelve months ago.  We thus thank God for the wonderful year that has passed.

But we also look forward with great anticipation to the year to come.  This, too, will be a year of the reign of our Lord.  It, too, will see the extension of His Kingdom still further.  More of His glory will fall upon the earth.  This will not be a glory that the unbelieving world will see.  For Unbelief is blind to what is plainly before its face.  But the eyes of faith will see it–they will see what is really there. 

This glory will come amidst pain and tears, toil and struggle, hardship and weary labours.  For here lies part of the very glory of the Kingdom that the eyes of faith see: despite all these afflictions, there will also be joy, and hope, and laughter, and delight in the Lord and in one another and in what He is doing amongst us.  We may be poor, but we know that we possess all things, and we are able to make many rich.  The past, the present, and the future all belong to us.  All of history belongs to us.  For we belong to Christ and the whole earth is His.  We may be sorrowful, but we will always be rejoicing, for how could we not have great joy at the ascension and session, at the position and primacy of our Lord. 

We know that in this coming year of our Lord, He will shake the earth once again with wars and rumours of wars, earthquakes and storms, disease and calamity.  This great shaking will be to enable to earth to be shed of that which can be shaken and removed, so that which cannot be shaken may remain.  His Kingdom is what cannot be shaken.  (Hebrews 12: 26–28)  Even disasters and calamities serve to His glory and His Kingdom. 

So, we look forward to the coming year.  It is His time. 

>Doug Wilson’s Letter From America

>A Christmas Eve Invitation

Expository – Topical
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, December 24, 2010

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit . . . merry Christmas.

Welcome, and thank you for coming this evening. We are grateful to have the opportunity to share our Christmas celebrations with you.

What is Christmas about? What is the point of the whole thing? We don’t want to make the mistake of assuming too much in our celebrations, in such a way that outsiders are left guessing about what the point might be. That would be rude, and Christmas is no time for such rudeness.

The first Christmas occurred in a world that was governed by death. This death had gained authority over all things because of the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in which we all have sadly participated. Because God is perfectly holy, nothing unholy can have fellowship with Him, and must necessarily be separated from Him. Because the human race became unholy in this sin, the whole human race was at that time separated from the fellowship with God that we had previously enjoyed. That separation from His life is what the Bible calls death. Just as an electric appliance that is separated from the socket in the wall is dead, so also we all, separated from His life, became dead. We did not cease to exist, but we ceased to run in the way that we were designed to run.

So sin is the condition of being unlike God, and death is what we call the natural ensuing separation from Him. In that sorry condition, most people struggle along to conduct their affairs. They are, as St. Paul says, “without God and without hope in the world” (Eph. 2:12). The apostle also teaches us that our way of “life,” which seems so natural to us, is actually a way of constant and unrelenting death (Eph. 2:1-5).

If we want evidence of this condition of death, we need look no further than our own hearts—our petty gripes, our selfishness, our lusts, our hypocrisies, our vainglorious competitions with others, our covetousness, our envy, and so on. God is not like that, and I am afraid that we are.

Stuck as we are in this condition, we cannot lift ourselves out of it. Appliances that are unplugged have no power at all—and therefore have no power to plug themselves back into the wall. We can’t fix our own problem, and we cannot even prepare ourselves to be fixed.

So this life, this power, that we have been separated from, is something we have no power to get back to. That means that if we and this life are to be reunited, that life must come to us—we cannot go to it, or, as I should say it, we cannot go to Him. We are unholy and powerless, and so we cannot ascend up into Heaven. But this limitation of ours is not a limitation of His. We cannot ascend to Heaven, but Heaven can descend to us. And that is exactly what Heaven decided to do. If we cannot go up, the Lord Himself will come down.

Jesus, the Son of God, who is the embodiment of life itself, became a man. This stupefying event, this miracle of miracles, is what we celebrate every Christmas. The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the Incarnate Deity, pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel.” Immanuel means God with us. Please note that it does not mean “us with God.” Before we can be with God, God must be with us. Before man can go up, God must come down.

But Jesus did not become a man just in order to find out what it was like down here. He did not come down just for the experience. He wasn’t slumming it, and He was not here as a tourist. Jesus took on a body like ours, so that He would be able to die. The experience of death was not possible in Heaven, and so Jesus took on a mortal body here so that He could taste death here. He did this so that we could, if joined to Him in faith, die along with Him. Now here is the glorious secret—if we die in Him, that means we are dying to the condition of death that surrounds us on every hand. And dying to death means . . . life. Where does death go when it dies? If death could ever die, it would live forever.

So Jesus did not die so that we wouldn’t have to. Jesus died so that we might die in a particular kind of way. That “way” includes the prospect of resurrection. Jesus died and rose so that we could, by faith, die and rise in Him. Outside of Jesus, our condition of death is nothing but an endless spiral downwards, into the pit that has no bottom. But in Jesus, death is a once-for-all definitive event, and it is followed immediately by a life that is eternal, endless, and everlasting. It is followed by glory.

Now I have said several times that we are joined to this dying and rising of Jesus by faith. What does that mean? What does that look like? It means listening to a message like this one, and it means believing it down to the roots of your soul. It means accepting this message as a truth tailored just for you. It means identifying with Jesus through the sign that He appointed, which is baptism with water. If you are already baptized, it means trusting Him to restore your baptism, and if you are not baptized, it means coming to Him humbly, asking Him to wash all your sins away. It means that you are “all in.” It means you have become a Christian.

Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead. This was in view from the very beginning. We are not dragging Good Friday and Easter into our Christmas celebrations. Christmas is the foundation of all that follows.

And so, just as we welcomed you warmly to this Christmas Eve service, so we also warmly invite you to Jesus Christ Himself. He is the way, the truth and the life. He is the death and resurrection. He is the beginning and end of all things. He is Heaven and earth reunited. He is the salvation that the prophets told us about from ancient times. He is the only way out of death. He is the only way that death can ever die. He is the Savior of the world, the one who takes away all the sins of the world. All of that is offered to you.

Every Christmas we are privileged to lift Him higher, and every Christmas we invite the ends of the earth to look to Him and be saved. Every Christmas we are gratified to see that more of the world has in fact emerged from its long night of death. You are invited to come with us as well. Come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.

>And So It Begins . . .

>The Great Battle of Our Time

Christmas can be a maudlin festival.  Baby Jesus in the manger, surrounded by lowing cattle, doted upon by loving parents, visited by shepherds.  Every loving parent feels drawn to the story.  Every mother identifies and feels affirmed.  This is the best that Unbelief can do with Christmas.  It is a pale perversion of the truth.  It is a comforting myth. 

In no way do we wish to undermine the celebration of the Advent.  It truly is a time for rejoicing, thanksgiving, and dancing on the high places.  But in order to do that we have to see the reality of what it was and is.  Here are just some of the realities that make dancing on the high placed mandatory for those who truly see and believe.

Firstly, there are the antinomies of Advent that leave us astounded, humbled, yet soaring in wonder.  Justin Taylor writes:

Charles Spurgeon preached in 1858 on the wonderful paradoxes of the incarnation:

Infinite, and an infant—
eternal, and yet born of a woman—
Almighty, and yet hanging on a woman’s breast—
supporting the universe, and yet needing to be carried in a mother’s arms—
king of angels, and yet the reputed son of Joseph—
heir of all things and yet the carpenter’s carpenter’s despised son.

In the light of these awesome realities and perplexities we are stumped by the Incarnation and by Advent.  We find ourselves “lost in wonder, love, and praise”.  We metaphorically want to take our shoes off, for we sense ourselves to be on holy ground.

Secondly,  the Advent that chills our bones because of the curse represented in it.  The conditions of the birth of Christ were not romantic, but degraded, bearing all the hallmarks of the curses of the Covenant.  To birth a child lying amongst animals is shocking and degrading.  The mud, the filth of animal faeces, the stench of urine, the abject poverty–all this stabs at our vitals because we know we were its cause.  Because of our sin and covenant breaking, Christ came forth to take on the full weight of divine wrath in our place.  As the Heidelberg Catechism so succinctly puts it:

Q.37: What do you understand by the word “suffered”, as in ” . . . Suffered under Pontius Pilate”?

That during his whole life on earth, but especially at the end, Christ sustained in body and soul the anger of God against the sin of the whole human race.

He started bearing that curse for us at His first entrance into the world. 

Thirdly, the Advent is the beginning of the end.  No doubt the angels of heaven looked at one another and said, “And so it begins–the great battle of all time.”  In this battle our Lord would be triumphant.  He would bear the curse, He would enter into Hell and free those of His people captive there.  He would rise and ascend to the Father and be installed as King of the heavens and the earth.  From that moment, the earth would start to fill up with the glory of God, until finally it would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

So, at Advent there is wonder, there is humility and shame, but there is also dancing.  He has come, and His Kingdom has come with Him–and we are part of it.  This is more important to us than anything.  “God has highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”  (Philippians 2: 9–11)  Nothing can avoid this outcome.  Nothing can stay His hand.  Every struggle and battle we face will but end up magnifying the greatness of His glory, power, and victory. 

Whilst it is true the powers arrayed against us are great this will only redound to the greater glory of the Son of God as they are brought before His feet. 

This is why Advent is one of the most profound festivals of our year.  “And so it began . . .” 

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Those We Imitate, We Honour

When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those nations. Deuteronomy 18:9

Moses is revealing and proclaiming the Law of God to Israel–laying down God’s instructions about how they are to live in the land of Canaan which they are about to enter. This is but a foreshadowing of the New Covenant. Israel’s entering into the land of Promise to inherit it and possess it is an antetype of the entering in of Christ’s people–not into heaven as is so commonly but mistakenly believed–but an entering into and taking possession of the entire earth.

Christ’s servants have been called and redeemed out of slavery and commanded to go forth and disciple all the nations. Israel’s entering into the land and taking it as their possession and inheritance was but a pale foreshadowing of the great inheritance of the whole earth. The work of going in and taking possession of the entire earth is what Christ’s people are engaged in now.

Moses’s instructions continue to have relevance to us, the heirs of the Old Covenant, the Church as we go forth to take possession of the earth. Our text requires that as we do this, we do not imitate the nations in their detestable practices. We must at all times remain separate, holy to the Lord. Under the New Covenant with the full revelation of our Lord and His death and resurrection into which we are all baptized, we no longer require the scaffolding, the supports, the props, the protections, and the “spoonfeeding” of infancy, required by ancient Israel. Full and final atonement for sin has been made, we have died to sin in Christ, we have risen with Him to the heavenlies, He has been enthroned upon high, and His Spirit has been poured out upon His people and Christ goes forth to conquer, not with a sword, but with His holy Word. These realities allow the Old Covenant scaffolding to be removed; the types and shadows are no longer needed.

These great realities and forces allow Christ’s people to be insinuated amongst Unbelievers and not be overcome; they enable us not to conform to Unbelieving practices that surround us; they free us from an otherwise inevitable conformity to the world.

Deuteronomy 18:9 commands that we not learn to imitate the detestable practices of Unbelievers. Not learning implies that Unbelievers and the cultures of Unbelief stand willing and ready to instruct and teach us in their beliefs and ways. Unbelief stands ready always to instruct us in its version of truth, knowledge, power, and control over the world. In Moses’s day, the dominant “power-word” of the nations was witchcraft and divination. Engage in rituals to get the gods to reveal their secret knowledge to you. Then cast spells and engage in sorcery to manipulate and control the world around you. (Deuteronomy 18: 10-11)

The Lord says that whoever does these things is detestable to Him; he who practises them will be driven out from before the Lord. (Deuteronomy 18:12) As they are driven out, God’s people enter in, occupy and take over in their place–but only if they themselves remain blameless to the Lord. (Deuteronomy 18:13).

It is at this point that we need to confess that many of Christ’s people in our day do not realise that the dominant culture of Unbelief in which we live and move is just as pagan and detestable as the Canaanite culture of Moses’s day. It, too, has its false version of truth, knowledge and power. Its culture of Unbelief has matured into even more detestable and despicable forms than ancient Canaanite paganism. Now the hubris and arrogance of man has emerged into full-throated Unbelief. There are no demons, spirits, witches, or gods–whatsoever. The power-word is impersonal nature itself, and its lord and god is man, and man only. With the faculty of Reason and its prophetess of Science, man can plumb the deep things of reality and determine his own truth. He can then weave his knowledge as a form of spell-casting to manipulate and control the world.

God says, “do not learn to imitate these detestable things”. How intolerable and completely unacceptable, then, it is to send our children to be taught in these false beliefs, these divinations and sorceries. To send our children to be taught in pagan-controlled schools, which are officially forbidden to acknowledge and teach God alone as the source of truth and knowledge, is equivalent to the Israelites sending their children down to the local temple of Baal to be taught there by Baal’s prophets and priests what the real truth about things is, and the way things really are.

When Israel actually did do this in later years, it provoked the Lord to a terrible anger, resulting in the destruction of Israel. Israel itself was driven out from before the Lord, as one of the pagan nations of Canaan, because what they were doing was so detestable to Him. Do we think, for a moment, that it is any different now. Did Christ come to make us more amenable to idols? Has He come and died and ascended so that we can be free to give our children up to the instructors and instructions of Unbelief? Has He sent forth His Spirit upon us, so that we would send forth our children to be taught detestable things? May it never be.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Timing is Everything

See, I have taught you statutes and judgments just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do thus in the land where you are entering to possess it. So keep and do them, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” (Deuteronomy 4: 5–6)

The Bible consists of 66 books, dozens of human authors, employing four different languages, spread across several cultures, written over a course of 1500 years. All is the living Word of the Living God. There are some books in the Bible, however, that are more important than others, in the sense that these particular books more powerfully explain and shed light upon the whole Bible.

In the Old Covenant corpus, four books are most important: Genesis, Deuteronomy, Psalms and Isaiah. How do we know this? Because these four books are quoted and referred to most often in the New Covenant corpus. The apostolic writings of the New Covenant, which is the culmination and fulfilment of the Old, draw most often upon these Old Covenant books to teach, illustrate and explain the fullness of redemption and revelation in Christ Jesus.

Thus, if we are seeking an Old Covenant introduction, we could do no better than to focus upon these four critical books of the Bible.

Whilst Deuteronomy has many themes, one that is particularly central is the relationship between Israel as a nation and the Unbelieving nations that surrounded them. This is of special interest to us living under the New Covenant in His blood because we are called to go into all the nations of the earth and transform them into covenanted discipled nations of our Lord.

In Deuteronomy 4: 5–6 we receive instruction upon how our city is to be set upon the hill to be noticed by the Unbelievers that surround us. Firstly, as a people we are to keep God’s statutes and judgments. This will set us necessarily set us apart from Unbelievers, even as we live amongst them. We will keep one day holy to the Lord out of seven. We will join with the Lord’s people to worship Him alone. We will not tolerate any other gods. We will fear the Lord and not use His holy name as a curse word. We will marry only those within the faith. We will raise our children very differently from the way that Unbelievers around us raise theirs. Our lives will be filled with songs of praise and thanksgiving to our great God for His mercy, His love, and His Christ, our Redeemer. Our schools and our schooling will be very different–not only in what is taught, but how it is taught–and so forth.

These things represent the wisdom and understanding of God’s people–and they set us apart from the practice and culture of Unbelief which surrounds us. It is what the people “see” when they look at us. These things make us very distinct–and the more pagan and unbelieving a culture becomes, the more distinct and different we are. The more the darkness of paganism descends, the brighter the light of God shines in His people, even as the candle shines more brightly at night.

The more families and marriages break down amongst the Unbelievers, the more wonderful and attractive Christian marriages become. The more children rise up to curse and hate their parents, the more glorious adult Christians who revere and honour their aged parents seem to Unbelievers. And this leads them to say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people,” because even as the created world around us is beautiful and wonderfully made, reflecting the glory of God Himself, so His work of redemption and salvation amongst His people, is a glorious reflection of the beauty of God Himself.

And in this, God is glorified. In this context and these circumstances the preaching of the Gospel is further empowered amongst Unbelievers. An historical illustration of this can be found in the time of our Lord, where the Jewish synagogues throughout the world were also populated with “God-fearers”–Gentiles who had come to understand the disgusting effects of idolatry and who saw in the faith of our fathers a truth and beauty that drew them out of their darkness towards light. It was these God-fearers who responded immediately to the preaching of the Gospel in the synagogues.

It remains true, however, that most often the initial response of the Unbeliever to seeing faithful Christian families living according to God’s statutes, is mockery and disdain, if not downright hostility. But as their own lives crumble and the wastage of Unbelief becomes ingrained in their pores, often disdain changes to grudging respect, and then even longing, if not envy. These things, however, take time, even more than one generation. But faithfulness over time is an emblem of truth and genuineness.

It has pleased God to take time, much time, to bring His Kingdom to pass. Our lives are short; His Kingdom is everlasting. We need to ensure that our brief lives reflect profoundly the everlasting realities, so that generations to come will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>There’s Work to Be Done; Each of Us Must Do It

Now Jehoshaphat . . . walked in the way of his father Asa and did not depart from it, doing right in the sight of the Lord. The high places, however, were not removed; the people had not yet directed their hearts to the God of their fathers. (II Chronicles 20: 31–33)

The Kingdom of God reached its high water mark in the reign of Solomon, “the Younger”. Following Solomon’s later unfaithfulness to the Lord, the Kingdom split after his death. The Northern Kingdom of Israel was substantially lost to the faith from that point, finally being destroyed by Sennacherib in 722 BC. The Southern Kingdom of Judah limped on for another century or so.

Judah had a mixture of good and bad kings. Jehoshaphat was one of the more faithful, God fearing kings. But so often we read a litany of even relatively faithful kings accepting idolatrous religion and worship and tolerating its admixture with the worship of the one true Living God. The “high places” were altars to idol gods scattered throughout Judah.

The declension of the Davidic line occurred for at least one very pressing reason: it made the hearts of the faithful long for the coming of David’s promised greater Son, Messiah who would be utterly true to His God and Father and who would keep covenant perfectly all the days of His life. Every admixture with idolatry, every compromise, every expression of unfaithfulness in the Kingdom and the kings of Judah made the longing and yearning for Messiah deeper and more desperate.

We, now, are privileged to live in the days of Messiah. He has come forth. The promises of God in Him are yea and amen.  He has taken the throne of David. He sits forever upon that throne in the heavens. He works, rules, and judges tirelessly to remould, remake, and perfect the Kingdom of God–which, as He taught us–is the matter of seeing God’s will done upon earth as it is in heaven. No longer are we cast down in spirit when our rulers and the powers of this world turn away from God and His Christ. For Messiah rules and He will deal with each one. No longer do we need to accept unfaithfulness and defalcation, for Christ rules in heaven and all enemies are gradually being placed under His feet.

In the history of His Church since Pentecost we have seen, as in the line of David’s house, admixtures of faithfulness and unfaithfulness, of true worship of the true God mixed with idolatry and unfaithfulness. But our longing and our labour to put these things right, whilst similar to the great reformers and prophets under the Old Covenant, is different in this one great respect: we no longer yearn for the coming forth of Messiah. He has come and He is now filling up the earth with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. This work is infallible, sure, and certain for God has given Him the Kingdom, having accepted the perfection of His death and resurrection on our behalf. Therefore, feet are surer, hands are steadier, and hope is stronger.

But we must understand that God is not served by lies. There remains in far too many places a toleration of idolatry in the Church, just as in Judah of old. It will not do.

When a man mixes idol worship with the fear of the Lord he invariably and inevitably commits this great sin: he measures and balances and restricts and proscribes the Lord in his heart and mind, as he divides his loyalty and genuflects to, and makes room for, false gods. The root of the sin lies here: he is measuring God and making God, as it were, conform to the desires of his heart, rather than wholeheartedly submitting to God and accepting that God measures him, not the reverse.

This determination to measure God and make Him conform to our feeble reasoning lies at the root of much of the present weakness and enervation in the modern Church. We would believe about God only what makes sense to us. We would progress toward God by understanding before we believe. This makes God the servant and we the master. This makes God the creature, and we the creator.  Whereas Augustine rightly declared that he believed in order to understand, an idolatrous rationalism has so infected the modern church that we have become as Judah of old. We would worship God, but only according to the way and precepts of our rationalistic consent, only if we keep the altars on the high places of our hearts and minds firmly in place.

It is the spirit of the age, and the Church has become all too unfaithfully devoted to it. The Church in the West remains fundamentally syncretisic–as it was during the days of the kings in Judah. But Messiah will never, ever accept it–not in the life of an individual believer, and not in His Church.

Casting out the idolatry by which we pay respect and homage to other authorities and powers must be done. It must be done in individual hearts and minds, person by person, believer by believer. It must be done in our families. It must be done in our congregations and places of worship. It is what the Lord commands us to be about. The high places of our hearts and minds, our families and our communities, and our holy places of worship must be removed and we must direct our hearts to King Jesus–and King Jesus alone. All else flows and cascades down from that.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>I Believe in God the Father, Almighty

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power, and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and the earth is yours. Yours is the Kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head over all.
I Chronicles 29:11

It is not possible for fallen men, remaining in the thrall of sin, to believe in God. Not the true God, the only God, revealed in Scripture.

Now it is perfectly possible, even inevitable, for all men to believe in gods. These gods do not actually exist, but are human inventions representing speculations about how the universe works. Because man is both finite and frail he is driven to seek refuge in fictional constructions of reality to make the world a kinder and gentler place. All the gods of Unbelief are thus human constructed crutches.

From the ancient who invoked the gods to bring good fortune and sound crops to today’s sophisticates who invoke impersonal forces of blind chance implacably configured to lift mankind into higher states of being, Unbelieving man seeks to re-interpret the world after himself. Man is the creator, the denier, the re-constructer of the deities. He is the measure of all things, and the gods are weighed and measured in his hands—which is to say, they are idle fabrications and lies.

No Unbeliever can confess and acknowledge the God revealed in the Scripture, without God first changing his heart. Only then will he confess God in truth. For the one true God is the Almighty.

It is this attribute of God—His infinite and total power—which is so offensive to fallen man. It is this attribute which he cannot and will not acknowledge without first being born again by the Spirit of God. For to acknowledge truthfully that God is indeed Almighty is to surrender in body, mind, and soul to Him. One cannot believe in such a universal absolute Being without confessing and acknowledging His dominion over one’s own life. That fallen man cannot do this of himself is obvious. Sin always insists on “wriggle room” when it comes to thinking about God.

It is not surprising then, that the Christian Church, by constrast, has always confessed that it believes in “God the Father, Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” The ancient Christian church also likewise confessed. So, David in our text, prays to God during the convocation of all Israel to commit to the building of the temple after his death. “All that is in the heavens and earth is yours.” Period. No exceptions.

We are told that the universe continues to expand. At the frontiers of that expansion, every atom, every sub-atomic particle in all its movements and energies and existence is totally controlled by God. It belongs to God and answers utterly to God. It moves and has its being in God. And in our world—in the totality of its past, and the present in which we now live, and in the future to which God is taking it—the same is exhaustively true.

It is this attribute of God which is so offensive to Unbelief. But it is the attribute which gives such great comfort and hope and glory to the Believer. Life fundamentally becomes a celebration of the glory and majesty and victory of God. Everything has meaning and purpose. Nothing is without its place. All that is in the heavens and the earth—the entirety of everything—answers to our God and is for His glory and majesty.

For the Unbeliever this is minatory; a dire threat. For the Believer it is a great comfort. God must not acquit Himself and measure up before my requirements and standards, but I to Him and His. And He has sent His only begotten Son into the world to die and rise again in my place to ensure that this can and will be the case.

Truly, “yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power, and the glory and the victory and the majesty”.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>The Gospel in a Nutshell

We believe in the God Who justifies the ungodly. This lies at the heart of the Christian faith, as revealed in God’s Word. In Romans 4:5 we read, “But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reckoned as righteousness.”

God justifies the ungodly–that is, us–not by ignoring our sin, and acting as if it did not exist. We ourselves do this sort of thing. When we say, “I am going to act as if this never happened” we are overlooking something and pretending that it never occurred. When God justifies the ungodly, however, He does not do so by means of lying or dissembling. He openly and candidly tells us that we are ungodly. In the first three chapters of Romans the Spirit inspires Paul to accuse and convict the entire human race, descended from Adam, of sin. There are no exceptions. None.

God justifies us by binding us to a Representative, the Man Christ Jesus. Christ represents us in living out an entirely and completely holy life–faithfully keeping all the commandments of God in thought, word and deed all the days of His life. His righteousness is credited to us, because He is our God-designated representative. But He also represents us by personally assuming all the guilt of our sin and standing in our place for its punishment. Christ binds His righteousness to us; He also binds our sin to Himself.

By this means, God justifies the ungodly. It is in Christ and being bound to Him that all our blessings originate; it is from Christ that all blessings flow. Our faith is nothing more or less than our entrusting ourselves to God and His Christ, to do what we could not do–remove our sin and bring us into God’s presence holy and cleansed. That is why Paul declares that “faith is reckoned as righteousness.”

Thanks be to God for His Messiah. And thanks be to Messiah for His faithfulness to His heavenly Father and to us.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Losses

As the deer pants for the waterbrooks,
So my soul pants for Thee, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?
Psalm 42:1-2

There is no other loss, in all the range of possible losses that is so great as the breaking of our communion with God. There are other losses–losses of friends by alienation or misunderstanding; losses of property, of comforts, of health, of reputation; the shattering of brilliant hopes, but there is not one of these that is such a calamity as the loss of God’s fellowship.

Men sigh over those misfortunes which touch only their earthly circumstances, but forget that the worst of all misfortunes is the decay of spirituality in their hearts. We do not know what God is to us until we lose the sense of his presence and the consciousness of His love.

This is true, indeed, of all blessings. We do not know their value to us until they are imperilled or lost. We do not prize health till it is shattered and we begin to realise that we can never have it restored again. . . . We do not appreciate the comforts and blessings of Providence till we have been deprived of them and are driven out of warm homes into the cold paths of a dreary world. . . . We do not know how much are friends are to us till they lie before us silent and cold.

In like manner, we do not know the blessedness of fellowship with God until His face is darkened or he seems to have withdrawn Himself. David never knew what God and God’s house were to his soul until he was driven away from his home and could no more enter the sanctuary. All the other bitter griefs and sorrows of the hour were swallowed up in this greatest of all his griefs–separation from the Divine Presence.

Who is there among us all that values highly enough the tender summer of God’s love that broods over us with infinite warmth evermore? Our Church privileges, our open Bibles, our religious liberty, our Sabbath teachings and communings, our hours of prayer–do we prize these blessings as we would if we were suddenly torn from them?

The loss of temporal things seems ofttimes to be necessary to empty our hearts that they may receive the things that are unseen and eternal. Into many a life God is never permitted to enter until sorest earthly losses have made room for Him.

Dr J.R. Miller, Weekday Religion, (1897)

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Thoughtfulness and Tact

A gentle answer turns away wrath,
But a harsh word stirs up anger.
The tongue of the wise makes knowledge acceptable,
But the mouth of fools spouts folly. . . .
A soothing tongue is a tree of life,
But perversion in it crushes the spirit.
Proverbs 15: 1–4

Some people have a wonderful way of always speaking a kind word or doing a kind act at the right time–just when it is most needed and will do the greatest good. . . . Many people with the very best motives and intentions and with truly large capacity for doing good almost utterly fail of usefulness, and throw their lives away because they lack this gift of tact. They perform their kindest deeds in such an inappropriate way as to rob them of nearly all their power to comfort or cheer. . . .

Everyone gives them credit for honesty of intention, and yet their efforts to do good mostly come to naught or, even result in harm. The sad part of it all is that their motives are good and their hearts full of benevolent desires. Their lives are failures because they lack the proper touch and do not know in what manner to do the things they resolve to do.

Others . . . because of their peculiar and gentle tact scatter gladness all about them. Their thoughtfulness seems intuitively to understand just what will be the best word to speak or the kindest and fittest thing to do.

There are some who regard tact as insincerity or hypocrisy. They boast of their own honesty which never tries to disguise a dislike for a person, which bluntly criticises another’s faults even at the price of his friendship. They believe in truth in all its bare ruggedness, no matter how much pain they may give. . . . They mistake bluntness for sincerity. In the name of candour they employ sarcasm or sharp and bitter personalities. When others are grieved or hurt, or insulted, they answer, “I am a blunt man; I say what I mean, and you must excuse me.”

Frankness is to be honoured, but this is not frankness; it is impertinence, cruel unkindness, the outbreak of bad nature in him who speaks, which, instead of doing good, works only harm.

A true appreciation of . . . the teachings of the Gospel will reveal that our Lord Himself exercised the most thoughtful tact among the people. He was utterly incapable of rudeness. He never needlessly spoke a harsh word. He never gave pain to a sensitive heart. He was most considerate of human weakness. He was most gentle toward all human sorrow. He never suppressed the truth, but He uttered it always in love. Even the terrible woes He pronounced against unbelief and hypocrisy . . . must be read in the light of His tears over the city of His love which had rejected Him. . . .

He never spoke brusquely or made truth cruel. He saw in every man and woman enough of sadness to soften the very tones of His speech, and produce feelings of ineffable tenderness in Him. If we can but realise, even in the feeblest way, the feeling of Christ toward men, our bluntness and rudeness will soon change to gentleness. And this is true tact. It is infinitely removed from cunning. Cunning is insincere. It flatters and practises all the arts of deception. It professes a friendship and interest it does not feel. It seeks only to promote its own ends. It is selfish as the core, and utterly wretched and debasing. . . .

Tact has a wonderful power in smoothing out tangled affairs. A pastor, with it, will harmonise a church composed of most discordant elements and prevent a thousand strifes and quarrels by saying the right word at the right time and by quietly and wisely setting other influences to work to neutralise the discordant tendencies. . . . In the home it is a most indispensable oil. Quiet tact will always have the soft word ready to speak in time to turn away anger. It knows how to avoid unsafe ground. It can put all parties in good humour when there is danger of difference or clashing. It is silent when silence is better than speech.

A man with great gifts and learning accomplishes nothing, while another, with not one-half of his natural powers or accomplishments, far outstrips him in practical life. The difference lies in tact–in knowing the art of doing things. . . . Tact is no doubt largely a natural endowment, but it is also partly an art, and can be cultivated.

Dr J. R. Miller, Weekday Religion (1897)

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>The Duty of Encouragement

And the news about them reached the ears of the church at Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas off to Antioch. Then when he had come and witnessed the grace of God, he rejoiced and began to encourage them all with resolute heart to remain true to the Lord; for he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And considerable numbers were brought to the Lord.
Acts 11:22–24

There are few things to which we need to train ourselves more diligently and conscientiously than to the habit of giving cheer and encouragement.

To many people life is hard. It is full of struggles. It has more of shadow than of sunshine. Its duties are stern and severe. Its burdens press heavily. . . . Work is hard. Battles are fierce, and are often lost. Hopes fade like summer roses, leaving disappointment and dead ashes. The constant and invariable gravitation of human hearts is toward discouragement and depression. . . .

And yet there are so many who do not remember this. There are preachers who utter discouraging messages. If a commander, leading his army in battle, were to issue lugubrious proclamations, dwelling upon the difficulties and dangers of the hour, the power of the enemy and the uncertainty of the issue, he would ensure the defeat of his army and the failure of his cause. And yet there are men set to lead in the army of Christ who ever dwell mournfully on the hardships and discouragements of the conflict, with scarcely a brave, heroic, hopeful word.

Should it not be the office of all who occupy responsible places as leaders, where their every word or tone has a mighty influence over other lives, carefully and conscientiously to refrain from ever uttering one sentence which would check the enthusiasm of any hopeful heart or add to the fear and depression of one who is already downcast? There is enough in life’s sorrows and trials to dishearten without this. . . . Many a church is kept from aggressive work and earnest progress by the discouraging utterances of a timid leader. One of the essential qualifications of leadership is large hopefulness. . . .

On the other hand, there are those who live to give cheer and encouragement. They may have burdens, or even sore griefs, of their own, but they hide them away deep in their own hearts, not carrying them so as to cast their shadows on any other life. . . . When you talk with them, you do not hear one gloomy word. They take hopeful views of everything. They always find some favourable light in which to view every discouraging event or circumstance. No ardour is quenched, no hope is dimmed, no enthusiasm is repressed in your heart, as you take counsel with them. They seek to remove difficulties, to open paths, to inspire fresh courage, to make you stronger, and to add to your determination to succeed. . . .

In the training and eduction of the young there is a great call for encouragement. Parents are too apt to criticise their children and find fault with them for the imperfect manner in which they do their work. In too many homes the prevalent temper is that of fault-finding and censure. Is it any wonder that children sometimes grow discouraged and feel that there is no use in trying to do anything right? They never receive a word of commendation. Nothing that they do is approved. The defects and mistakes in their work are always pointed out, oftentimes impatiently, and no kindly notice is every taken of any improvement or progress made. Their little plans and ambitions are laughed at. . . .

Wise parents and teachers understand this. They notice every improvement, every mark of progress, and speak approvingly of it. They commend whatever is well done. They never chide for faults or mistakes when the child has done its best. They point out the defects in such a way as not to give pain or to discourage, but rather to stimulate to new effort. . . .

A naval officer who rose to high honour relates his first experience under fire. The conflict was very fierce, and at the beginning his terror was very great. He was almost utterly unmanned. The commander of the ship noticed his terror, and, coming to him in the gentlest manner, stood beside him for a few moments and told him of his experience when first called into danger. He assured the young officer that he understood his feelings perfectly and sympathised with him. He then encouraged him with the further assurance that the feeling of dread would soon pass off and his courage would return. Had the commander approached him with stern reproach and rebuke, he might have become utterly panic-stricken. As it was, his words of sympathy made him brave as a lion.

Thus I read the duty of encouragement. It is the sunshine most lives need. . . . There are discouragements enough in most lives already. Let us never add to life’s burdens, but let us rather at every possible opportunity breathe cheer, fresh incitement, new courage.

J. R. Miller, Week-Day Religion, 1897

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>The Beauty of Quiet Lives

“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful slave You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Matthew 25:21

Many people measure a man’s power or effectiveness by the noise he makes in the world. . . . Young men, when they start in life, usually think they must make all the noise they can, else their lives will be failures. They must make their voices heard loud above the din and clamour of the world, else they must remain unknown and die in obscurity. But thoughtful, observant years always prove how little real power their is in “the bray of brass.” Life is measured by its final and permanent results. . . . It will be seen, in the great consummation, that those who have wrought silently and without clamour or fame have in many cases achieved the most glorious permanent results.

There are great multitudes of lowly lives lived on the earth which have no name among men, whose work no pen records, no marble immortalises, but which are well know and unspeakably dear to God, and whose influence will be seen, in the end, to reach to farthest shores. . . .

Much of the best work we do in this world is done unconsciously. There are many people who are so busied in what is called secular toil that they can find few moments to give to works of benevolence. But they come out every morning from the presence of God and go to their daily business or toil, and all day, as they move about, they drop gentle words from their lips and scatter seeds of kindness along their path. . . .

More than once in the Scriptures the lives of God’s people in this world are compared to the dew. There may be other points of analogy, but especially noteworthy is the quiet manner in which the dew performs its ministry. It falls silently and imperceptibly. It makes no noise. No-one hears it dropping. It chooses the darkness of night, when men are sleeping and when no one can witness its beautiful work. . . . In the morning their is fresh beauty everywhere and new life. The fields look greener, the gardens are more fragrant, and all nature glows and sparkles with new splendour.

Is there no suggestion here as to the manner in which we should seek to do good in this world? . . . . “When thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what they right hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret.” We are commanded not to seek the praise of men–not to do good deeds to be seen of men or to receive reward of them. . . .

Honour is to be sought for Him. We are to seek to be blessings in the world, to breathe inspiration everywhere, to shed quickening influences upon other lives, to impart helpfulness and noble impulse to all we meet, and then to disappear, so that men may not praise us, but may lift their hearts to Christ alone. Florence Nightingale, having gone like an angel of mercy among the hospitals in the Crimea until here name was enshrined in every soldier’s heart, asked to be excused from having her picture taken, as thousands begged, that she might drop out and be forgotten, and that Christ alone might be remembered as the author of the blessings her hands had ministered. That is the true Christian spirit. . . .

It is the quiet, unheralded lives that are silently building up the Kingdom of Heaven. Not much note is taken of them here. They are not reported in the newspapers. Their monuments will not make much show in the churchyard. Their names will not be passed down to posterity with many wreaths about them. But their work is blessed, and not one of them is forgotten. . . .

Not a life lived for God is useless or lost. The lowliest writes its history and leaves its impression somewhere, and God will open His books at the last, and men and angels will read the record. . . . And in Heaven they will receive their reward–not praise of men, but open confession by the Lord Himself–in the presence of the angels and of the Father.

Dr J R Miller, Week-Day Religion, 1897