April 27, 2011: Perhaps The Three Best-Spent Hours Of Your Life
Last week I promised to guide you to a good preacher whose sermons you can get online. His name is D.A. Carson, professor of New Testament at Trinity International University. I had the privilege of attending some classes he taught at Trinity years ago. You will not find a more knowledgeable or accurate teacher of the Bible anywhere.
There are few better ways to spend three hours of your life than by listening to three messages by Carson, "What Is The Gospel And How Does It Work?" Parts 1, 2 and 3. They're available at thegospelcoalition.org. I'm afraid I don't know how (or if it is possible) to create a link on this blog, so I'll simply write out for you the full web addresses of these sermons. They are:
http://thegospelcoalition.org/resources/a/what_is_the_gospel_and_how_does_it_work_part_1_of_3
http://thegospelcoalition.org/resources/a/what_is_the_gospel_and_how_does_it_work_part_2_of_3
http://thegospelcoalition.org/resources/a/what_is_the_gospel_and_how_does_it_work_part_3_of_3
You will also benefit from his lecture on suffering at
http://thegospelcoalition.org/resources/a/how_can_a_good_god_allow_suffering
Anyone who reads my blog will quickly detect my zeal for accurate preaching. I admit my standards are high. But Carson meets the standards of holier men and wiser teachers and more exacting scholars than I will ever be. If I can succeed in moving someone to listen to his sermons, my joy will be like that of getting somebody to read works by C.S. Lewis or George MacDonald. I will feel that by God's grace I have done something good.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
April 20, 2011: Verify!
When I was in school I heard about a professor who taught at three seminaries: Dallas, Fuller and Trinity. At Dallas, when he announced to the class "It is raining outside," students immediately took out their notebooks and wrote, "It is raining outside."
At Fuller, if he'd say "It is raining outside," students would leave their chairs and go to window to see if he was right.
At Trinity, when he told the class that it was raining, every student would raise his hand to ask, "Will this be on the test?"
The professor's parable was a clever way to poke fun at three types of students - the compliant sheep, the wary skeptic and the uncaring pragmatist - and the schools to which they tend to gravitate. But let me use his joke to make a point. When listening to anyone who claims to speak for God, be a Fullerite: doubt, verify and falsify. Subject every statement to rigorous intellectual cross-examination. Do not swallow every bit of slop tossed your way. And please shun the self-centered contempt for fact that never asks more than "Will this help me?". Jesus said "The truth will set you free" (John 8:32), and to know the truth you must engage your mind. You have to get up out of your chair and go to the window to look for yourself.
Noble people do that, and the Bible applauds them. In Acts 17:11, St. Paul's colleague Luke reports, "The Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." Paul was not offended that they were checking out his message for themselves. He encouraged it!
Yesterday my lovely wife told me she heard a preacher maintain that in the Bible Jesus only answered three questions, and she wanted to know what they were. Good for her! First I had to verify that this was actually what the preacher said. Maybe there was a misunderstanding. But there wasn't - I listened to him online, and in fact he did say, "Do you know that in the gospels Jesus was asked 183 questions? Do you know how many he answered? Three."
Whenever a preacher says something like that, take it as a signal, a challenge, a command even - to dive into your Bible. Two good things will happen. First, you'll learn (or have reinforced) truths of Scripture. Second, you'll have evidence to confirm or disconfirm the preacher's credibility. Maybe you will wind up saying, "Wow! He's right! He's worth paying attention to - even when he says something completely counterintuitive." Or maybe you'll say, "My but he's careless. I had better take his words with a grain of salt."
I spent about three minutes reading passages in the gospels and found right away the following questions that Jesus answered. The questions and answers themselves are in bold.
(1) John 9:1-3: As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."
(2) John 6:28-29: Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
(3) John 14:5-6: Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
(4) Matthew 19:3-6: Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
(5) Matthew 19:7-8: “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning."
(6) Matthew 19:16-17: Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.”
(7) Matthew 19:18-19: “Which ones?” the man inquired. Jesus replied, “‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”
(8) Matthew 19:20-21: “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?” Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.
(9) Matthew 19:27-29: Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."
In the other room my wife was reading her Bible, and when I walked in she said, "Jesus answers lots of questions!" He sure does, doesn't he. Do you know I can almost identify the moment when I first fell in love with her? It was at a Bible study two years ago when, sitting next to me, she pointed to Matthew 16:19 and asked, "What does this verse mean?", and listened intently while I went off on the verse. By God's grace I am married to an earnest seeker of truth.
We who preach like to say provocative things, and there is nothing wrong with that. Stunningly counterintuitive statements are more easily remembered than bland cliches. We learn a lot when we are surprised. For example, tell an ordinary evangelical Christian that, in the Bible, when people convert to Christ, they never say a prayer inviting Jesus into their hearts but they always get baptized immediately, and he might say, "Are you kidding me? That can't be right." But if he "goes to the window to look for himself," and reads all 20 texts in the February 13, 2005 Pastor's Page, he may well come away saying, "Oh. Wow. That's not the way they do it at my church."
Over the years I have disturbed quite a few good souls - and provoked some angry reaction - by saying, "Though you hear frequent talk of 'God's unconditional love,' the Bible in fact flatly denies that God's love is unconditional." But please don't take my word for that. Go to the window and look for yourself. Type the word "love" into BibleGateway's online search (or look it up in a fat concordance), read the passages listed, and see what you conclude. (While you're at it, type in the word "unconditional" and see if you get any hits.) You may find some help in my “Unconditional Love” Is Unbiblical Nonsense (June 11, 2006) and Nothing You Can Do Can Make God Love You More? (September 22, 2009).
Next week, Lord willing, I'll guide you to some online preaching you can practically always trust from a teacher who, in my experience, virtually never makes a careless statement about the Bible. But remember that even when listening to the best of the best preachers, the same principle remains. Verify.
When I was in school I heard about a professor who taught at three seminaries: Dallas, Fuller and Trinity. At Dallas, when he announced to the class "It is raining outside," students immediately took out their notebooks and wrote, "It is raining outside."
At Fuller, if he'd say "It is raining outside," students would leave their chairs and go to window to see if he was right.
At Trinity, when he told the class that it was raining, every student would raise his hand to ask, "Will this be on the test?"
The professor's parable was a clever way to poke fun at three types of students - the compliant sheep, the wary skeptic and the uncaring pragmatist - and the schools to which they tend to gravitate. But let me use his joke to make a point. When listening to anyone who claims to speak for God, be a Fullerite: doubt, verify and falsify. Subject every statement to rigorous intellectual cross-examination. Do not swallow every bit of slop tossed your way. And please shun the self-centered contempt for fact that never asks more than "Will this help me?". Jesus said "The truth will set you free" (John 8:32), and to know the truth you must engage your mind. You have to get up out of your chair and go to the window to look for yourself.
Noble people do that, and the Bible applauds them. In Acts 17:11, St. Paul's colleague Luke reports, "The Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true." Paul was not offended that they were checking out his message for themselves. He encouraged it!
Yesterday my lovely wife told me she heard a preacher maintain that in the Bible Jesus only answered three questions, and she wanted to know what they were. Good for her! First I had to verify that this was actually what the preacher said. Maybe there was a misunderstanding. But there wasn't - I listened to him online, and in fact he did say, "Do you know that in the gospels Jesus was asked 183 questions? Do you know how many he answered? Three."
Whenever a preacher says something like that, take it as a signal, a challenge, a command even - to dive into your Bible. Two good things will happen. First, you'll learn (or have reinforced) truths of Scripture. Second, you'll have evidence to confirm or disconfirm the preacher's credibility. Maybe you will wind up saying, "Wow! He's right! He's worth paying attention to - even when he says something completely counterintuitive." Or maybe you'll say, "My but he's careless. I had better take his words with a grain of salt."
I spent about three minutes reading passages in the gospels and found right away the following questions that Jesus answered. The questions and answers themselves are in bold.
(1) John 9:1-3: As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life."
(2) John 6:28-29: Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
(3) John 14:5-6: Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
(4) Matthew 19:3-6: Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
(5) Matthew 19:7-8: “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning."
(6) Matthew 19:16-17: Now a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.”
(7) Matthew 19:18-19: “Which ones?” the man inquired. Jesus replied, “‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”
(8) Matthew 19:20-21: “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?” Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.
(9) Matthew 19:27-29: Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life."
In the other room my wife was reading her Bible, and when I walked in she said, "Jesus answers lots of questions!" He sure does, doesn't he. Do you know I can almost identify the moment when I first fell in love with her? It was at a Bible study two years ago when, sitting next to me, she pointed to Matthew 16:19 and asked, "What does this verse mean?", and listened intently while I went off on the verse. By God's grace I am married to an earnest seeker of truth.
We who preach like to say provocative things, and there is nothing wrong with that. Stunningly counterintuitive statements are more easily remembered than bland cliches. We learn a lot when we are surprised. For example, tell an ordinary evangelical Christian that, in the Bible, when people convert to Christ, they never say a prayer inviting Jesus into their hearts but they always get baptized immediately, and he might say, "Are you kidding me? That can't be right." But if he "goes to the window to look for himself," and reads all 20 texts in the February 13, 2005 Pastor's Page, he may well come away saying, "Oh. Wow. That's not the way they do it at my church."
Over the years I have disturbed quite a few good souls - and provoked some angry reaction - by saying, "Though you hear frequent talk of 'God's unconditional love,' the Bible in fact flatly denies that God's love is unconditional." But please don't take my word for that. Go to the window and look for yourself. Type the word "love" into BibleGateway's online search (or look it up in a fat concordance), read the passages listed, and see what you conclude. (While you're at it, type in the word "unconditional" and see if you get any hits.) You may find some help in my “Unconditional Love” Is Unbiblical Nonsense (June 11, 2006) and Nothing You Can Do Can Make God Love You More? (September 22, 2009).
Next week, Lord willing, I'll guide you to some online preaching you can practically always trust from a teacher who, in my experience, virtually never makes a careless statement about the Bible. But remember that even when listening to the best of the best preachers, the same principle remains. Verify.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
April 12, 2011: How To Know The Truth
In George MacDonald's The Musician's Quest, young Robert Falconer comes to doubt the faith in which he was raised. At one point he asks himself whether he can even be sure that Jesus existed. But immediately his familiarity with Scripture brings to mind these words of Jesus: If any man chooses to do his will, he shall know whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak of myself. (John 7:17). MacDonald writes, "Here was a word from Jesus himself, giving the surest means of arriving at a conclusion of the truth or falsehood of all that he said, namely, by doing the will of God." For the remainder of the book, Robert does the will of God, and believes.
I can hardly tell you the joy I felt in finding in MacDonald an expression of a truth that first gripped me about 15-20 years ago and has helped shape the way I teach and preach and present the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is simply this: obedience opens the heart to faith, while disobedience (but for the grace of God!) closes it.
We Christians rightly try to persuade non-Christians of gospel truths: that God exists, that he is powerful and good, that Jesus of Nazareth is his unique son, that Jesus died for fallen sinners, that he rose again from the dead. I value sound apologetics as I value few other things, and have given as gifts countless copies of C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and Lee Strobel's The Case For Christ, The Case For Faith, The Case For Creator, and The Case For The Real Jesus. And I have often said things like "The only thing that really matters about Christianity is whether it is true. If it is false, we must discard it no matter how much it helps us; if it is true, we must embrace it no matter how much it costs us and no matter how much we despise its sterner doctrines."
But we are limited in what our proclamation of truth can accomplish simply because waves of reason tend to crash uselessly against granite cliffs of sin. People who choose to defy God will not embrace the truth of his gospel. Truth masquerades as foolishness to those who know the will of God but do not do it. Disobedient people deafen their ears. You cannot convert a man who is not good and does not want to be good.
But a man who is sincerely trying to do right is a likely candidate for conversion. C. S. Lewis wrote that it was no coincidence that he became a Christian at a time in his life when he was trying to be good: "[I]t is significant that this long-evaded encounter [with God] happened at a time when I was making a serious effort to obey my conscience. No doubt it was far less serious than I supposed, but it was the most serious I had made for a long time.” Likewise, the centurion Cornelius in Acts 10 was first a righteous, respected, God-fearing man who gave generously to the poor (vs. 2,22) before he heard the gospel and believed.
For that reason my ears ring with indignation every time I hear an evangelical preacher label submission to the will of God with pejorative and demeaning terms like "works' righteousness," "do's and don'ts", "mere moralism," "shoulds," "keeping the rules," "Phariseeism," "trying hard to be good," "trying to earn favor with God." If you're a preacher and you talk like that, could you please stop it? Obedience is a good thing. The Bible says, "Without holiness no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6). Unbelievers are most ripe for conversion when they are trying to be good and longing to be better. They should be encouraged in their efforts! Few things ease the work of the Holy Spirit more than a disciplined submission to the demands of conscience. By doing the will of God (and yes, this will require effort, it won't be easy, a man will indeed have to "try hard" to obey), a man will know soon enough whether Jesus spoke the truth about himself and the Father.
Of course there is an awful corollary. I am sorry to say that I have known quite a few apostates over the years - people who once professed faith in Jesus and then renounced it. In every case (I have yet to see an exception) the departure from faith was preceded by a willful rebellion against God's will. I have also noted a stunning contrast between clear-minded, thoughtful explanations of arrival to Christian faith with later vague, inarticulate, shoulder-shrugging rejections of it. (E.g., "I don't know. It's just, um - I don't want to talk about it. I just want to do what makes me happy.") Having chosen to be disobedient, they lose interest in Christ, and having lost interest, they assume him to be false without ever having bothered to engage their minds in a single rational argument about him.
When Robert Falconer (in all likelihood, a fictional projection of George MacDonald himself) came to the dark night of doubt, and could not resolve his difficulties intellectually, he had two choices. He could start sleeping with his girlfriend and become an alcoholic and train his tongue to tell lies, or he could say his nightly prayers, stay honest and chaste, and commit himself to serve his fellow man. The same kind of choice still faces all those who stand near the cliff that divides faith from unbelief.
In George MacDonald's The Musician's Quest, young Robert Falconer comes to doubt the faith in which he was raised. At one point he asks himself whether he can even be sure that Jesus existed. But immediately his familiarity with Scripture brings to mind these words of Jesus: If any man chooses to do his will, he shall know whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak of myself. (John 7:17). MacDonald writes, "Here was a word from Jesus himself, giving the surest means of arriving at a conclusion of the truth or falsehood of all that he said, namely, by doing the will of God." For the remainder of the book, Robert does the will of God, and believes.
I can hardly tell you the joy I felt in finding in MacDonald an expression of a truth that first gripped me about 15-20 years ago and has helped shape the way I teach and preach and present the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is simply this: obedience opens the heart to faith, while disobedience (but for the grace of God!) closes it.
We Christians rightly try to persuade non-Christians of gospel truths: that God exists, that he is powerful and good, that Jesus of Nazareth is his unique son, that Jesus died for fallen sinners, that he rose again from the dead. I value sound apologetics as I value few other things, and have given as gifts countless copies of C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and Lee Strobel's The Case For Christ, The Case For Faith, The Case For Creator, and The Case For The Real Jesus. And I have often said things like "The only thing that really matters about Christianity is whether it is true. If it is false, we must discard it no matter how much it helps us; if it is true, we must embrace it no matter how much it costs us and no matter how much we despise its sterner doctrines."
But we are limited in what our proclamation of truth can accomplish simply because waves of reason tend to crash uselessly against granite cliffs of sin. People who choose to defy God will not embrace the truth of his gospel. Truth masquerades as foolishness to those who know the will of God but do not do it. Disobedient people deafen their ears. You cannot convert a man who is not good and does not want to be good.
But a man who is sincerely trying to do right is a likely candidate for conversion. C. S. Lewis wrote that it was no coincidence that he became a Christian at a time in his life when he was trying to be good: "[I]t is significant that this long-evaded encounter [with God] happened at a time when I was making a serious effort to obey my conscience. No doubt it was far less serious than I supposed, but it was the most serious I had made for a long time.” Likewise, the centurion Cornelius in Acts 10 was first a righteous, respected, God-fearing man who gave generously to the poor (vs. 2,22) before he heard the gospel and believed.
For that reason my ears ring with indignation every time I hear an evangelical preacher label submission to the will of God with pejorative and demeaning terms like "works' righteousness," "do's and don'ts", "mere moralism," "shoulds," "keeping the rules," "Phariseeism," "trying hard to be good," "trying to earn favor with God." If you're a preacher and you talk like that, could you please stop it? Obedience is a good thing. The Bible says, "Without holiness no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6). Unbelievers are most ripe for conversion when they are trying to be good and longing to be better. They should be encouraged in their efforts! Few things ease the work of the Holy Spirit more than a disciplined submission to the demands of conscience. By doing the will of God (and yes, this will require effort, it won't be easy, a man will indeed have to "try hard" to obey), a man will know soon enough whether Jesus spoke the truth about himself and the Father.
Of course there is an awful corollary. I am sorry to say that I have known quite a few apostates over the years - people who once professed faith in Jesus and then renounced it. In every case (I have yet to see an exception) the departure from faith was preceded by a willful rebellion against God's will. I have also noted a stunning contrast between clear-minded, thoughtful explanations of arrival to Christian faith with later vague, inarticulate, shoulder-shrugging rejections of it. (E.g., "I don't know. It's just, um - I don't want to talk about it. I just want to do what makes me happy.") Having chosen to be disobedient, they lose interest in Christ, and having lost interest, they assume him to be false without ever having bothered to engage their minds in a single rational argument about him.
When Robert Falconer (in all likelihood, a fictional projection of George MacDonald himself) came to the dark night of doubt, and could not resolve his difficulties intellectually, he had two choices. He could start sleeping with his girlfriend and become an alcoholic and train his tongue to tell lies, or he could say his nightly prayers, stay honest and chaste, and commit himself to serve his fellow man. The same kind of choice still faces all those who stand near the cliff that divides faith from unbelief.
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