Christianity is the Religion of Sinners

Preparing to preach from 1 John 1:5-2:2 this Sunday, I have spent the week meditating on sin and the Christian life. In the process, God has painfully but graciously reminded me of the sins of my past, and indwelling sin that still remains within me. Thanks be to God that I am redeemed from them all through the blood of Christ! How marvelous grace is when we remember our sin.

Here’s a good word from Matthew Henry on 1 John 1:7 – -

We must beware of deceiving ourselves in denying or excusing our sins. The more we see them the more we shall esteem and value the remedy. If we deny them, the truth is not in us, either the truth that is contrary to such denial (we lie in denying our sin), or the truth of religion, is not in us. The Christian religion is the religion of sinners, of such as have sinned, and in whom sin in some measure still dwells. The Christian life is a life of continued repentance, humiliation for and mortification of sin, of continual faith in, thankfulness for, and love to the Redeemer, and hopeful joyful expectation of a day of glorious redemption, in which the believer shall be fully and finally acquitted, and sin abolished for ever.

How Freely Do I Accept a Rebuke?

In the context of a discussion about personal discipleship, a friend recently recommended I read the little booklet, Many Aspire, Few Attain by Walter A. Henrichsen. Henrichsen was an early leader in the Navigators organization, which places such a great deal of emphasis on “life-on-life” discipleship and the practical disciplines of Bible Study, prayer, Scripture memory, etc. The recommendation came with a caveat, however.

“Reading that booklet is like eating nails.”

At least that had been his impression when he first read it in college, and Henrichsen’s blunt counsel about how few who begin to follow Christ whole-heartedly actually persevere to the end certainly is not for the faint of heart. He offers 14 concise, sharply articulated pitfalls to avoid, sounding very much like a drill sargeant getting acquainted with enlistees on the first day of boot camp. You can just picture the college students for whom this address was originally directed quivering under his steely gaze as they listen to his words. But it was good for my soul.

Reason number 11 why many aspire but few attain is that they are “unable to accept a rebuke.” Here is what he had to say . . .

Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate thee; rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee. Proverbs 9:8

“When was the last time someone rebuked you – the last time someone sat down and instructed you more perfectly in the way? If it has not been recently, it is because people don’t consider you to be wise. They think you are a scorner. They are afraid if they rebuke you, you won’t take it. Don’t deceive yourself into believing that you haven’t been rebuked lately because you haven’t needed it. You need it. The question is, are you getting it? You can tell whether or not people think you are wise by how often they rebuke you.” (Walter A. Henrichsen, Many Aspire, Few Attain, NavPress Publishing 2008, 31)

The Christian Life by Sinclair Ferguson

The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction. By Sinclair B. Ferguson (Banner of Truth: 1989, PB, 201 pp)

Part of it is his unsurpassed grasp of Biblical theology and the historic Christian faith. Part of it is the combination of experiential and academic knowledge that comes from being a pastor and a systematic theology professor. Part of it is his unabashed devotion to “the Lord Jesus Christ.” Part of it is that Scottish accent that just carries with it a dignity and the impression that he has spent decades in the Scriptures.

For these reasons and more, I read and listen to Sinclair Ferguson every time I get a chance, but I read The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction with more than my personal edification in mind. I read it with an eye to the possibility of using it with a group at my church sometime in the near future. As J.I. Packer indicates in the introduction, Ferguson stands firmly within the stream of Calvin, Owen,  and all the other great Reformed theologians who have written about the theology of the Christian Life. And yet, Packer says, “though the ideas themselves are drawn from Scripture with a skill that makes them fresh and compelling as if one had never met them before.” (x) I agree.

The great strength of Ferguson’s book is that each chapter communicates the truth of historic, reformed teaching on each subject, but distilled by a seasoned pastor-scholar into 10-12 page increments. I found his treatement of Union with Christ, “The Christian’s Conflicts,” and death in the life of the believer to be particularly helpful, but now that I think of it, everyything was really quite good. Ferguson also makes great use of historic literature and hymnody of the Christian faith in order to illustrate his points in a very warm and compelling way. It was good for my soul and my mind to work through this book a chapter at a time. 

Well, I knew the content would be excellent before I ever opened it. But will it serve the purposes of a local church reading group just beginning to test the waters of intentional theological study? I have led off here at my own church with slightly less intimidating works such as What is a Healthy Church Member by Thabiti Anyabwile and Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald Whitney. Ferguson’s theological introduction, by its very nature, would represent a noticable jump in the difficulty of its content. I would feel more comfortable with several more months of teaching behind me, particularly through one of Paul’s epistles, before immediately cracking it open. However, the time is coming soon when it will be just the thing for our first foray into doctrinal study. And when that time comes, we can depend upon Ferguson as a reliable guide. One friend of mine led his church through each chapter a few summers ago, and testified that it served them well. If you are looking for a manageable (again, only 200 small pages) but substantive theological handbook on the Christian life, I doubt you can do much better than what Ferguson has given us here.

Sermon Listener’s Guide in Practice

Following up on the earlier post about the Sermon Listener’s Guide, I thought I would offer a report on how I was able to put it into practice recently. My wife’s sister was with us this past weekend, and the three of us worked through each question on the guide after the morning service. A few words of encouragement: First, we were able to do this in a natural, somewhat casual manner. Anything that smacks of Puritanism as much as a systematic review of a sermon immediately sounds somewhat stiff and artificial. But we were able to do this quite naturally, my sister-in-law and I at the kitchen table, and my wife finishing preparing lunch. There was truly nothing intimidating about it. Second, it was extremely beneficial to all of our souls. As the preacher of the sermon in question, I can say honestly that drawing out more personal application and discussing the text afterwards made a highly profitable sermon out of an otherwise mediocre offering. Not only were we able to give voice to our own thoughts, but then we were all mutually encouraged and challenged by each other’s remarks. Finally, working through the Guide increased our joy on the Lord’s Day. It did not feel like a duty, or an inquisition, or anything of the sort. Even as we confessed sin to one another, and areas where the Word had called us to repent, we were filled with gladness that God’s Spirit was in our midst, conforming us to the image of Christ. Speaking for myself now, I felt like we had truly made the most of our Lord’s Day gathering, and were able to redeem the Sunday lunch hour, which far too often is completely forfeited to idle conversation (I am especially guilty here).

As I hope this encourages my own people, I hope it encourages you to give the Sermon Listener’s Guide a try. May God bless his Word to your souls.

Establish the Work of Our Hands! A Theology of Work from the Prayer of Moses

After a sweeping prayer about eternity, death, and the God who is everlasting, why does Moses turn our attention in Psalm 90:17 to the comparatively mundane? In the final verse, after a poetic plea for an eternal perspective, Moses closes with a final request about God “establishing the works of our hands.” As a matter of fact, he makes it twice: “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” Why is this so important to him, and what does this have to do with eternity and relating to the God who is from everlasting to everlasting?

Moses has been turning our attention back to the Creation and Fall story throughout this Psalm, speaking of the curse of death, satisfaction in the presence of God, the return of the children of men to the dust from which they were created, etc,  and here he does it again. Adam was not created to sit around on a cloud with Eve gazing at a light. He was created instead to work, to establish something with his own hands, as God’s vice-regent created in his own image, cultivating and keeping the garden in which God had placed him, to the glory of his Heavenly Father. (Gen 1:26-30; 2:15-20) When sin enters the Garden, this same impulse to do something with lasting significance remains, but it is twisted. It is twisted now into ugly ambition to build and establish something in our own strength for the glory of our own name, as at Bable. (Gen 11:4) This driving desire to work comes out in all sorts of ways, whether on the job, in a consuming hobby, in the family, or any number of other areas. No one wants to give their time and energy to something that is just going to fall apart and be forgotton. In this sense, we are all indeed purpose-driven, though our purposes are hopelessly corrupted by sin.

But what Moses tells us here is that part of learning to “number our days” by the grace of God, and part of gaining the God-given “heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12) means reclaiming our work for the glory of Christ. Our years may only be seventy, or eighty by reason of strength, but during that span, the man or the woman with the heart of wisdom is called to continue his or her labor. But this time, she is not doing it in her own strength, for her own namesake, but is crying out instead to the everlasting God to establish that work for her. This seems to be the very instructions that Jesus gives to his disciples in the upper room in the middle of a conversation about the Trinity and the spread of the Gospel after he leaves. As he sends them out in his name, he does not tell them to grit their teeth and just get the job done, instead he tells them that they are to ask the Father. ”Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.” And this fruit, because his own electing purposes stand behind it, “will abide.” (John 14:12-14; 15:16 )Paul would later commend the same practice to the Corinthians, saying, “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:31)

In these days of economic turmoil, this speaks powerfully to our theology of work and labor and personal accomplishment. There may be men and women in their thirties and forties who cannot focus on the preached Word of God on the Lord’s appointed day of rest, because all they can think about is getting back to work, laboring in a project, earning a little more on the paycheck, desperate to establish something with the work of their own two hands. They will be commended by that in our culture as hard workers. As go-getters. And yet the barns they are tearing down in order to build up bigger ones will be swept away and forgotten in a matter of a generation. But there are others in our congregations – godly widows who spend their days alone in their homes, overlooked as completely insignificant by our society. And yet they regularly spend their time pouring out prayers to their Heavenly Father for the souls of their children and grandchildren, for God’s blessing to be upon their church and their pastor and Sunday School teacher. Their labor may not look like much now, but the Lord God to whom they cry out has promised to establish their work for eternity. The prayers of these ladies, and the efforts of Sunday School teachers, and the sweat of the humble men who offer up an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay to the glory of God throughout the week . . . will be commended and established in the Kingdom of Christ for eternity. As a pastor, I’m trying to learn how to speak to both sides, to call out to them with the comforting and stirring Gospel cry of Psalm 90:14, “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”

Snowstorm in Curve, Tennessee (3/7/09)

13 inches is a lot of snow where I come from, and that is exactly what we experienced on Saturday night, March 7, here at home. It was enough to render our country roads impassible and to move even a stodgy preacher like me to consent to cancelling Sunday services. I am putting these up a little late, but if you have ever lived in West Tennessee, you know what it is to be fascinated by the mystery of Job 38:22, “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow . . . ?” I am still marveling.

Snowbound: taking in the scene from the door of the parsonage that morning.

 

"Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love . . .

 

. . . that we may rejoice and be glad all our days." Psalm 90:14

 

Undisturbed, snowy beauty at 8 am

 

Curve Baptist Church, est. 1885

 

Ascending the slope where we joined our brothers and sisters in some Sunday sledding.

 

Up to our knees in snow for the first time in our lives and loving it.

Reading in the Local Church

Richard Baxter’s Reformed Pastor. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. J.I. Packer’s Knowing God. Charles Bridges’ The Christian Ministry. Robert Letham’s The Holy Trinity. Of all the various means God has used to sanctify me in the past few years, he has used Bible-saturated, Christ-exalting books as much as any other. I praise God for faithful professors at Union University who put these life-changing books in my hands.

As a pastor, I want to provide the same service for my people here by putting good books in their hands. I want them to read clear theology. I want them to be challenged in their pursuit of godliness. I want them to hear some of the voices of the great cloud of witnesses who have already run the race. And yet, I have not been called to shepherd a group of seminary students, for whom reading represents a major portion of their lives. Instead, Christ has captured in my small, rural setting men and women with demanding jobs, growing families, most of whom have never had reading Christian literature made a great priority within the church. But this does not mean the abandonment of reading projects. What it does call for is some strategic selectivity.

I am looking for books that are challenging, but which are clearly written and communicate meaty biblical/theological truths in a fairly simple way. On an even more practical level, I am looking for books that don’t look intimidating. The time may very well come to crack open Calvin’s Institutes together, but for now, I want something 200 pages or less. And where as if I were collecting sources for a paper I would stick to the primary sources, this is where those great synthesizers and summarizers do the church such a great service. 

So these are the books I am looking for – collecting little libraries in every category from doctrine to church history to devotional literature. I want to draw more attention to specific titles my church and I have found helpful here in the future, but for now I am thinking of all of Donald Whitney’s books, the 9 Marks series of books, some of D.A. Carson’s more popular-level devotional books like A Call to Spiritual Reformation, the Gospel-centered books by C.J. Mahaney and Jerry Bridges, and the inspiring biography George Muller Delighted in God! by Roger Steer. Of course, I am never opposed to raising the bar and slipping in a few Puritan works here and there when they are particularly clear, like John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or Grace Abounding.

None of this is revolutionary information, I realize, but it has already borne so much fruit here at my church, particularly in the lives of some of our men. When an author can make the Gospel particularly clear, like Mahaney in The Cross-Centered Life, it can sometimes do more for the man reading and re-reading his words than a whole series of my sermons. I am writing as one profoundly grateful for the ministry of the faithful men who have served the church by their writings, and eager to encourage others to make use of their labors. Do you regularly read with your fellow church members? If not, I could not recommend it more strongly. If so, what has been helpful?

A Bittersweet Goodbye to John’s Gospel

Preparing to preach John 21 tomorrow morning has been bittersweet.
It has been sweet because it is one of the most precious texts in all the Bible for exhausted and insufficient fishers of men, failed disciples, aspiring pastors, and all those who just long to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. It has been bitter because I know I failed miserably to uncover the glory of this or any of the other preceding texts in this Gospel. It has been sweet because it brings to completion the first major book I have preached completely through as a pastor to my people here at Curve Baptist Church, and we have all basked in beholding the glory as of the only Son of the Father. It has been bitter because next week we will leave behind the earthly life and work of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I feel a bit like the weeping Mary Magdalene: “they have taken away my Lord . . . ” And yet, like Mary, I can dry my eyes, because it is foolishness to seek the living among the dead. Whatever text we may find ourselves in on a given Lord’s Day could rightly be written in red letters, because as Peter tells us, every prophet has spoken by “the Spirit of Christ.” (1 Peter 1:11) And if anyone knows that voice, it’s Peter.

Sinclair Ferguson made a remark about a year ago as he finished a series on the Gospel of John that has stayed with me. He said that he would go home from church a little sad that day because it was very likely the last time he would work through John’s Gospel with a church in his lifetime. What an unspeakably great privilege it is to preach the Word of God each week. How long will the Lord tarry at the right hand of the Father and afford us this honor? How long will we be able to proclaim his excellencies? How many more times will we be granted the grace to mount the pulpit and feed the Sheep of the Chief Shepherd with the Gospel of grace? Oh, my cold heart! How could you treat this sacred office with contempt and indifference? Thank you for these six months in the Gospel of John!

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” John 21:15

Church Reform and the Kings of Judah

My heart beats for the reformation of the local church. Along with other faithful brothers, I desire to see the churches of my home in West Tennessee radically conform their lives practices to the teachings of Scripture, to the pure Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I think this is a labor worth giving our lives for. We will probably never know the glories of the martyr’s death like a missionary serving in hostile territory. Yet it is a call to day after day put our hands to the task before us with all our might, enduring far more subtle hostility and social pressures, content with earthly obscurity and the smile of our Heavenly Father. It is a difficult, but a glorious calling.

With that in mind, reading through the narratives of some of the Kings of Judah recently has given me plenty to think about. Because most of the kings were so awful, we are all pretty familiar with the handful of bright spots throughout Judah’s history, who shock the reader by actually calling the people back to covenant faithfulness. The two most prominent in my own mind are Hezekiah and Josiah. (2 Chronicles 29-30; 34-35) Their stories are inspiring narratives of revival in Judah, when the Baals were demolished and the Word of God was heard and obeyed.

A Christless Sermon is the Merriment of Hell

“O! how are our souls dissatisfied when we listen to a sermon destitute of Christ. There are some preachers who can manage to deliver a sermon and leave out Christ’s name altogether. Surely the true believer will stand like Mary Magdalene and, over the sermon, and say, “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” Take away Christ from the sermon, and you have taken away its essence. The marrow of theology is Christ, the very bone and sinew of the gospel is preaching Christ. A Christless sermon is the merriment of hell. A Christless sermon is a fearful waste of time; it incurs the blood of souls, and dyes the man’s skirts with gore who dares to preach it. But too much of Christ we cannot have. Give us Christ always, Christ ever.”

- C.H. Spurgeon, “A Visit to Calvary,” Spurgeon’s Sermons Vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 329-330.