Mining Grace

In the Old Testament, God revealed this secret of his will to a small number; in the New Testament (now without any distinction between peoples) he discloses it to a large number. The reason for this difference must not be ascribed to the greater worth of one nation over another, or to a better use of the light of nature, but to the free good pleasure and undeserved love of God. Therefore, those who receive so much grace, beyond and in spite of all they deserve, ought to acknowledge it with humble and thankful hearts; on the other hand, with the apostle they ought to adore (but certainly not inquisitively search into) the severity and justice of God’s judgments on the others, who do not receive this grace.

-Synod of Dort, 3/4.7

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Why did God choose Israel over all of the other — aparently more worthy — options?  Why did God choose me over all of the other — apparently more worthy — options?  Enquiring minds would like to know.  God’s people aren’t saved from their sins because they are smarter, prettier, better geographically situated, or upwardly mobile.  God saves sinner solely according to his “free good pleasure and udeserved love.”  But enquiring minds still want to know.  And to enquiring minds God has given no answer.  The only road of enquiry that he has opened up is into his sovereign grace.  Do not pry into God’s secret counsel rather learn from his revealed will.  He invites all to salvation.  The one who comes to him he will in no way cast out.  The smoking ember he will not put out and the bent stalk he will not break.  Come to God and find out the meaning of his “free good pleasure and undeserved love.”  Repent of your sins and believe in Jesus as the God-man the only savior of sinners.

An outline for a prayer of thanksgiving from Matthew Henry’s, Method for Prayer.

We have reason to thank God for the spiritual mercies he has shown to Christians,

1. For the strivings of the Holy Spirit with us and the admonitions and checks of our own consciences.
2. For the saving change brought about in us by his blessed Spirit.
3. For the remission of our sins, and the peace of our consciences.
4. For the influences of grace in sanctification and perseverance.
5. For sweet communion with God in holy ordinances and the communications of his favor.
6. For gracious answers to our prayers.
7. For support under our afflictions, and spiritual benefit and advantage by them.
8. For the performance of God’s promises.

An outline for a prayer of thanksgiving from Matthew Henry’s, Method for Prayer.

We should thank God for the goodness of his grace relating to our souls, their future in heaven, and for God’s blessing on his church,

1. For his gracious design and provision of man’s redemption adn salvation, when he was lost and undone by sin.
2. For the eternal purpose and counsels of God concerning man’s redemption.
3. For appointing a Redeemer, gracious condescension to fallen men, and provision for the broken Adamic covenant.
4. For the early and ancient indication of the gracious design concerning fallen men.
5. For the many glorious instances of God’s favor to the Old Testament church.
6. For the wonderful and mysterious incarnation of the Son of God, and His coming into the world.
7. For God’s gracious appointment of Christ, and his upholding of him in his great work of redemption.
8. For his holy life, his excellent doctrine, and the glorious miracles he did to confirm his doctrine.
9. For the great encouragement Christ gave to poor sinners to come to him.
10. For the full satisfaction which he made to the justice of God for the sin of man, by the blood of his cross, for the purchases, victories, and triumphs of the cross, and for all the precious benefits which flow to us from the dying of our Lord Jesus.
11. For his resurrection from the dead on the third day.
12. For his ascension into heaven, and his sitting at God’s right hand.
13. For the intercession which he ever lives to make for us.
14. For the dominion and sovereignty to which the Redeemer is exalted.
15. For the assurance we have of his second coming to judge the world.
16. For the sending of the Holy Spirit to comfort and support us in the absence of Christ’s bodily presence, to carry on his undertaking, and to prepare things for his second coming.
17. For the covenant of grace made with us in Christ, and all the privileges, signs and seals of it.
18. For the writing of the Scriptures, and the preserving of them pure and entire to our day.
19. For the institution of ordinances for the church, and particularly that of the gospel ministry.
20. For the planting of Christianity  in the world, and the establishment of the church, despite the oppositions of hell.
21. For the preservation of Christianity in the world to this day.
22. For the martyrs, confessors, lights of the church, and good examples of those who are gone before us to heaven.
23. For the communion of the saints, that spiritual fellowship which we have with all good Christians.
24. For the prospect and hope of eternal life, when time and days shall be no more.

An outline for a prayer of thanksgiving from Matthew Henry’s, Method for Prayer.

1. Stir up yourself to praise God by considering both the reason and the encouragement we have to praise Him.
2. Be particular with your thanksgiving to God.  You have reason to thank him,
   1. For how he has shown us his goodness in his Word, the Bible.
   2. For the many instances of his goodness.
      1. This includes the goodness of his sovereign care over our bodies and the life that we now live:
         1. With reference to all of creation, and mankind in general.
         2. With reference to us, his people in particular.
            1. He has given us reasoning minds and has made use capable of knowing, loving, serving, and enjoying him; unlike the animals.
            2. For our preservation; our lives are prolonged, and we have continuing use of our reason, body, and senses.
            3. For remarkable recoveries from danger by sickness or otherwise.
            4. For the supports and comforts of this life, which have made our earthly pilgrimage easy and pleasant.
            5. For success in our vocations and affairs, blessings in relationships, and comfortable places to live.
            6. For our freedoms as citizens of this country.

I give you thanks, O Lord, with my whole heart

-King David, Psalm 138:1

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I’m sitting her in my study wishing that Thanksgiving were already here.  I can almost taste the food.  I can almost hear the laughter inducing fun.  I can almost feel the warmth of my house with my family all gathered in.  It is a wonderful time of year to take stock of God’s blessings and thank him.

Even a cursory study of the Bible on a Christian’s response to God for his goodness would overwhelm you with the word, “thanksgiving”.  A Christian — out of all people — is someone who should be profoundly thankful.  A Christian knows that his sins have been forgiven by God’s grace alone.  A Christian has been freed from trying to earn God’s pleasure having been given it freely instead.  A Christian even has his sorrows tailor made for him by God for spiritual growth.  A Christian truly knows where all his blessings in this life come from — God Almighty.

But even knowing these things doesn’t always lead the Christian to prayer.  There are times that we need the help of others to formulate our thoughts on Thanksgiving.  To help us in our prayers of thanksgiving I’m going to ask Matthew Henry to guest blog portions of his Method for Prayer over these next three days.  He’ll take three posts to provide you with an outline of how to be thankful in prayer. May it lead you thankfully to the Throne of Grace!

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

I have continued to preach through my series entitled, “Jesus, His Church, and His Mission.”  My goal has been to show the link between the person of Christ, the identity of his church, and the mission to which he has called every Christian.

I broke up the series into three sets of four sermons.  I’ve intentionally tried to hold off planning the rest of the series so that my weekly study might further my own throughts on these three crucial topics: Christology, Eccleisiology, and Missiology.

So far the series looks like:

1. Jesus is the Revelation of God
2. Jesus is Man and God
3. Jesus is the Mediator
4. Jesus is the King
5. The Church is a Kingdom
6. The Church is a Bride
7. The Church is a Building
8. The Church is a Body

Unfortunately there is no audio for my last two sermons — the church as Kingdom and Bride.  One week we had a bad CD in the recorder.  This past week we had a two second power outage in the middle of my sermon that shut down all our recording equipment.

I went into this series wanting to teach others the importance of being consciously focused on Jesus as they think about Church and mission.  I’ve found that I too need more work in this area.  Its easy to say you are Christ-centered.  It is something altogether different to labor to make it true in practice.  This is especially true when dealing with an intentity as large as “the church” and an endeavor as broad as “missions”.  The one and only anchor of both of these enormous things is Jesus Christ.  As soon as the anchor line to Jesus is severed, both church and missions become aimlessly adrift in a sea of pragmatism.  Jesus is absolutely essential — for salvation from sins and for growth in grace.

If you’re interested in theological reflection of the socio-cultural bent then you should check out this article by John Seel on James Davidson Hunter’s thesis of cultural change.  Then see the exchange between Ligon Duncan and Carl Trueman over at Ref21 on whether or not it hints at Marxist thinking.

Disclaimer: The only reason I continue to be fascinated by Hunter’s work is because I had him as a Sociology 101 professor at UVA.  Other than that affinity, most of his stuff is over my head.

What, therefore, neither the light of nature nor the law can do, God accomplishes by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the Word or the ministry of reconciliation. This is the gospel about the Messiah, through which it has pleased God to save believers, in both the Old and the New Testament.

- Syond of Dort, 3/4.6

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Literally, “gospel” means “good news.”  It is fundamentally good news because God accomplishes it.  Man’s works read like the morning paper — bad news to worse news.  But if God places his hand to the plow it brings forth a harvest of grace. When Jesus is lead editor, the morning paper is gospel — good news.  Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ. He is the one through whom there is salvation.  There is no better news than that.

I love George Herbert.  I had read him some in college but it was Derek Thomas that finally turned me on to him.  Here is a Herbert poem for you to think on.

The  Pulley

So here I am.  Its 7:45pm and the boys have been in bed for 15 minutes.  Hallie is visiting her sister in Dallas this weekend which leaves me flying solo until mid-afternoon Sunday.  And, you know…I actually love it.  One of the things Hallie and I observed as a childless married couple were two types of parents: ones that enjoyed their children and ones that didn’t.  The former lived in the kind of homes that you just loved visiting.  Mama was happy.  Daddy was happy.  And the kiddos were happy.  That isn’t to say there weren’t problems — even major at times.  Its just that they weathered them together.  Then there was the latter.  Their dreams all entailed getting away from their kids.  “I can’t wait till their in college.  Then we’ll have our life back.  We’ll finally take that cruise we’ve always wanted to do.”  And unfortunately those kids understood all too clearly where they fit into their parents’ dreams.

So we made the decision to enjoy our children.  Little did we know what we were getting into.  Our children — all four by six years of them — challenge every last one of my nerves.  There are times I get angry.  There are time I get selfish.  There are times I have to sit a 3 year old on my knee and say, “Will you forgive daddy?  He didn’t speak to you very kindly a minute ago.”  The crazy thing about it all is that I simply can’t be the former kind of parents without Jesus.  He is the only one — through his death and resurrection — that has been able to show me and empower me to live for the sake of someone else.  He is the only one that has loved me that way — through all my tantrums, huffs, and downright malevolent moments.

All that said, this weekend is reminding me again how much God loves me and how much I’m learning to love my children the same way. The gospel has freed me up to sincerely and voraciously delight in my children.

And since no good blog post is complete without a numbered list, here are my top five favorite moments of today — in no particular order.

1. Reading “Pepin the Not-Big” reader with my two oldest boys for their Kindergarten home-school today.  The story is supposed to be about Charlemagne’s daddy.
2. Hearing my 1 year old say “I lub ooo” to his mama on the phone tonight.  He is a big phone listener but not so much a talker.
3. Laughing at myself for saying at lunch, “No, you have to finish your french fries before you can eat your candy.”
4. Seeing my 6 year old and 4 year old fight over who was going to share their blanket with my 3 year old who was thoroughly upset he had lost his.  Sharing is like a lunar eclipse in my house — infrequent and often missed.
5. That I’m really looking forward to tomorrow with the four musketeers.

For Further Reading

• Shepherding a Child’s Heart, Tripp

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.  This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior,  who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.  For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,  who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

- 1 Timothy 2:1-6

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Politicians generally know not to talk about their faith on the campaign trail for fear of isolating one group or another.  That’s why I found Christianity Today’s republish of a 2004 interview with Obama on his faith so interesting.  If you want to know how to pray for our president elect, read this interview–in entirety.  In it you’ll find Obama articulating some of the following views:

• Their are multiple ways to God
• Jesus was a good teacher
• Sin is not being true to one’s self
• Heaven is a location of rewards for the good things people do in this life
• Nobody has any claim on absolute truth

May it lead you to your knees.

I love the gospel. I love books.  I love books that tell me about the gospel.  I love men that write books that tell me about the gospel.  Every once in a while those things combine and I get to put a book on my bookshelf signed by the author.

For the sake of conversation and for a little fun, what autographed books are on your shelves?

Some of mine include:

1. Called to the Ministry, Clowney
2. No Place for Truth, Wells
3. Let’s Study Galatians, Thomas
4. Homeward Bound, Hartman

Having had him as my Systematic Theology prof, I can’t wait to read the first installment from The Good Doctor.  The rumor that he was writing a systematic was legend during my days at RTS, Charlotte.

Its a great Christmas gift idea for any systematic theology lovers on your list.

While I was gone, the guys over at the blog of the First Presbyterian Church, Jackson, MS decided to regear their posting schedule.  To date, the blog had served as a way to make readers more aware of various missionaries–a great theme for a blog by itself.  But they’ve decided to increase both their number of posts and things that they are talking about.

For more information on what to expect out of Ligon and his cohorts, take a look at their new blogging schedule.

I’ve arrived back from a week in Atlanta, GA.  Hallie and I spent the week at our denomination’s church planter assessment.  How should I describe the week?  It was intense.  It was at times fun.  We made some new friends. We had our known strengths and weaknesses confirmed and found some of each we didn’t know about.  It was a time that our relationship with the Lord was strengthened.  We were forced again to admit, “Jesus, it is about you, your strength, your kingdom and your glory, not about Joe and Hallie and theirs.”

Where does that leave us now?  Well, we’ve never been more excited about being involved in extending Jesus’ kingdom through starting new churches.  In addition to that, we received the assessment of “recommended for church planting.”  That is a humbling and scary thing.  To tell you the truth, I still haven’t grasped the full significance of those four confirming words.  Beyond that, we are praying and seeking the Lord’s guidance.

If you think about it, pray for us.  And if you’re excited about church planting too, let me know.