Questions?

Not all questions are good questions. And despite what your grade school teacher may have told you, there are stupid questions. And there are also ungodly questions which undermine God's church. We have seen in recent years how certain leader's questions, when they are continually posed and systematically asked, are not really questions at all but are statements about what that leader thinks about a topic. To emphasize this, Scott Oliphint, in his book entitled The Battle Belongs to the Lord, discusses the serpent's questioning of Eve and the resultant truth for the church:

No doubt Satan knew exactly what God had said. His question was not one of simple curiosity. He was after much more than information. The way in which he got his answers is instructive because it was so subtle. The serpent was able, in asking the question, to manipulate Eve's own concerns. By asking the question in the way that he did, he was able to focus her concern on his deception. He was able to get Eve to question God's command to her. First came the question, then the blatant opposition. Only after getting Eve "on his wavelength," so to speak, was he able to present to her the "other" option: "You will not surely die" (3:4).

This is how attacks and assaults operate within the Christian church, within Christian teaching and Christian institutions. They tend to work, subtly and almost undetectably, to bring us into their context of concern. They begin with subtle questions or "concerns." Underneath such questions lies a denial of biblical truth. If we begin to entertain those questions, we can, almost unconsciously, be involved in the same denial. Once there, such questions, with their subtle denials, can begin to "drip" into the foundation of our most cherished commitments in order to make those commitments, if possible, rot away. (Oliphint, K. Scott. The Battle Belongs to the Lord: The Power of Scripture for Defending Our Faith. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2003. Print. 48) 

Sometimes, a question is not just a question!We must be wary of question that, whether intended by the one who asks or not, undermine or denial biblical truth. There are honest questions that need honest answers. But there are also questions which, even in their consideration, erode and eat away at the foundational truths of Christianity. God help us be discerning in the recognition of the difference between the two.

Who is up for being demolished?

We all are, that's who.

Dr. Jim Hamilton explains in his book Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches:

How will you fare before the wrath of God? Do you think status or influence or wealth or greatness is going to help you on that day? There is only one shelter from the wrath of God on that day-the shelter of the cross of Jesus Christ. Only those who believed that Jesus died to pay the penalty for their sins, that he rose to conquer sin and death, only those who trust Jesus will be sheltered by Jesus from divine wrath on that day.

Interestingly, the gospel is the great leveler of humanity in the same way that God's wrath is. The gospel declares that only Christ can save and that nothing you bring makes you closer to God. Money doesn't put you closer to God. Power doesn't, influence doesn't, greatness doesn't, freedom doesn't. The only thing that brings you closer to God is faith in Jesus Christ. Your pride will be demolished one way or the other. Do you want it demolished right now by the cross and the gospel, or do you want it demolished on the last day of the wrath of the lamb. 

(Hamilton Jr., James M. Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012. Print. 185) 

Secular writers and the Spirit of God

John Calvin affirms that grace is evident in knowledge of all sources:

Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God's excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. (Institutes 2.2. 15)

This should give us a sense of gratitude for the light that radiates from humanity, whether it be sacred or secular.

Better to honour God than win

This was posted by Dr. Jim Hamilton Jr. at his blog For His Renown awhile ago and it is worth reading and re-reading, especially if you have kids in sport!


Here’s the guest post I was invited to contribute to the Family Ministry Today blog:

I love basketball and baseball. I love leaving it all on the court. I love the exhilaration of teamwork, the ball off the sweet spot, the basketball whispering through the net, the discipline to play defense, after-practice ground balls (or free throws), staying in the hitting cage until the hands bleed or the coach can’t throw anymore or the daylight is gone. And I love to win.

These things aren’t on the surface for me. They’re in me bone deep because they’re all wound up with my relationship with my dad. Growing up, my dad was my hero. He was also the high school basketball coach, and I think he worked (and works) harder than anyone else I know. My dad loved me and made sacrifices for me, and I wanted to please him. The best way to do that, I thought, was to lead the team my dad coached to the state championship. At some point, I think 8^th grade, I promised I would do it: I told my dad that we would face Corliss Williamson’s Russellville Cyclones in the State Championship, and that we would win.

I failed. We weren’t even close. We didn’t even get to play in the state tournament my senior year. My mom was a great comfort in those days, and she had long been planting seeds, saying things like “basketball isn’t everything.” One day those seeds would bear fruit.

I’m sad to say that along the way I adopted an “anything-to-win” mindset. Thankfully, there were lines that I couldn’t cross, lines that have been obliterated at every level in recent years. Lines that only need the name Barry Bonds mentioned for you to know what I’m talking about.

I failed my dad, but even in failing to win that state championship, he knew I loved him. I said it with words. He heard it more clearly spoken by all those summer days in the gym doing dribble drills, shooting more shots than I could count (counting a bunch of them trying to track shooting percentage—I had this big chart on the wall in my room), running the stairs, working out in strength shoes, doing everything I possibly could to improve. I’d seen my dad work, and I did my best to follow in his footsteps.

One afternoon the summer before last my sons and I were playing wiffle-ball in the backyard with the kid who lives next door. Something happened that triggered a realization in my mind. Seeds planted by my mother, watered by the word of God, suddenly sprouted, pushing up through the soil of my thinking. I don’t remember if the game had ended and my son was on the losing side or if it was just a tight play that went against him, but he threw a fit like the world had ended and all was lost. I recognized the sentiments and the behavior, and I could tell you worse stories about my own actions when I was 15 not 5, things that took place in settings more significant than the backyard. Suddenly I knew, I think for the first time, what my behavior had implied, and what my son’s showed in that moment.

All at once I realized that the antics were announcing that the most important thing in the world was performance and the outcome of this silly game. As I took my son in my arms that afternoon, a phrase came to my lips that expressed something I should have known long before: it’s more important to honor God than to win.

If athletics are going to be anything other than a training ground for thuggery, athletes have to know that it’s more important to honor God than to win. For kids to accept the bodies they’ve been given and refuse performance-enhancing drugs, they have to know that it’s more important to honor God than to win. For us to be able to honor our opponents whether we win or lose, we have to know that it’s more important to honor God than to win. For sports and competition to bring out the best—rather than the worst—in us, we have to go at it like it’s more important to honor God than to win.

It’s more important to honor God than to win. If I love my dad by giving it all I’ve got, but I dishonor God along the way, all I’m left with is an emotional connection to idolatry—and the idol of sports and the relationships associated with it will let us down every time. But if I seek to honor my father and mother because I’m seeking to honor God, the emotional connection is not empty and hollow but solid and everlasting in its shared experience of the two great commandments. We love God by loving people, by playing hard, by soaking ourselves with sweat and disregarding screaming lungs and skinned knees and reaching, striving, straining, winning or losing, for the praise of the one who is worthy.

The great goal of competition is not, therefore, victory. No, victory must be redefined as winning or losing (with all our might) in a way that honors God, because it’s better to honor God than to win.

Reflecting on condescension leads to worshp

I have posted quite a few quotes and ideas that have risen out of my reading of Scott. Oliphint's wonderful book God With Us. So much of what that book has to share resonates with me; it has both intellectual and affectional traction. I'm going to continue referring to it and sharing quotes from it over the next few weeks.

The following quote summarizes the idea of God's condescension in terms of his relationship, a covenantal one, with human beings. The fact that he relates to us, or even that we exist, indicates that He has condescended.

In a more general sense, the fact that God interacts at all with creation presupposes his covenantal character. Once he determines to relate to us, that relation entails that he take on properties that he otherwise would not have had. He limits himself while remaining the infinite God. The fact that he is Creator means that he is now related to something ad extra to which he was not related before. (188)

What an awesome God! This "stooping" of God to covenant with mankind, this condescension of God in the act of creation, makes him appear wonderfully loving and amazingly glorious to me. But He did not stop there. The great condescension with which God would bless the world is seen in the birth, life, death, resurrection, ascension, session, and return of Christ. I am left with a desire to worship this incredible God!

Quotes from The Legacy of Sovereign Joy

Here are some quotes from the Introduction of The Legacy of Sovereign Joy (Piper, John. The Legacy of Sovereign Joy: God's Triumphant Grace in the Lives of Augustine, Luther, and Calvin. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006. Print.):

God ordains that we gaze on his glory, dimly mirrored in the ministry of his flawed servants. He intends for us to consider their lives and peer through the imperfections of their faith and behold the beauty of their God. (17)

From David, the king, to David Brainerd, the missionary, extraordinary and incomplete specimens of godliness and wisdom have kindled the worship of sovereign grace in the hearts of reminiscing saints. (17)

Of course, Augustine is not alone in mingling a deep knowledge of grace with defective views and flawed living. Every worthy theologian and every true saint does the same. Every one of them confesses, “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). “Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12). But the famous flawed saints have their flaws exposed and are criticized vigorously for it. (27)

There are life-giving lessons written by the hand of Divine Providence on every page of history. (37)

Ransom in Mark 10

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
(Mark 10:45 ESV)

To bring this discussion to a close: the natural meaning of the ransom saying is that Jesus' death was in the stead of the many, He was to give His life instead of their lives, and we see no reason for abandoning this interpretation. It may or may not be easy to integrate this into some theory of the way the atonement works, but either way we are not justified in evading the plain sense of the Greek. (Morris, Leon. The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965. Print. 38)