He gave him no answer…
When the Pharisees put Jesus on trial before Caiaphas, the final charge they brought against him was blasphemy. This was on the basis of Jesus claiming to be the Son of God and His sitting “at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matt 26:63-66). But for the unbelieving Pilate, this would be a hard accusation to put a righteous man to death for.
But this is exactly why the Pharisees delivered Him to Pilate – so that he could sentence Him to death. To be sure, they heaped other accusations against Jesus to make sure that Pilate would see Him as a threat. However, Pilate could see right through this ruse, and when he questioned Jesus, he asked him “are you the king of the Jews?” to which Jesus merely said “You have said so” (Matt 27:11). (more…)
Faint and languid assent
Our reading group is currently reading Henry Scougals “The life of God in the soul of man”. This is a remarkable book, which I recommend every follower of Jesus Christ read. (more…)
Meditations on Psalm 62
This Psalm contains two key themes interspersed throughout the Psalm. The first is contained in verses 1-2, 5-8 and 11-12 and consists of David’s explanation of the Lord and who he is. (more…)
David, Bathsheba and adultery
The story of David and Bathsheba is well known, but not known well enough. We will often read it and not really check our own hearts as we ought and so we dont always take out everything that we can. (more…)
Ways to read the Bible – mastering the Bible
The term “mastering the Bible” is a hat tip to a very good little book by James Grey called “How to Master the English Bible”. Which while it is a difficult book to purchase, it is a little book well worth purchasing.
This method of reading requires longer concerted periods of reading in many cases and is well suited to gaining a deep familiarization of a particular book of the Bible.
How? Simply read the book (e.g. Ephesians) from start to end in one sitting – and then repeat. If possible re-read the book several times in one sitting. In some instances, this takes considerable time and concentration (e.g. Romans), but as you re-read you’ll find that you’ll see more of the meaning that the author intended and possibly more gaps (such as customs) that hide the intention.
Over time you’ll become very familiar with the book and have a deep understanding of the theme, intentions and characteristics of a book.
This is a great method to use to prepare to teach on a book of the Bible, or just to get a better understanding of a book or set of books.
There is only one better way of mastering a book than this method in my experience – and that is to memorize the book.
If you apply this method to (for instance) the entire new testament, you will indeed master the bits that you read over time and even the whole Bible.
Ways to read the Bible – devotional reading
Devotional reading is purposeful reading that is focused on allowing scripture to help us interact with the Lord. This is well described by George Muller of Bristol:
The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious Word, was to begin to meditate on the Word of God; searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the word; not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon; but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul. The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication;so that though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer…
Now what is the food for the inner man: not prayer, but the Word of God; and here again not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts… (Cited in “Desiring God” by John Piper, pp155-157)
This is a great way to start your day. Wayne Grudem also uses a method like this:
Usually I just “camp” on a phrase or verse, sometimes writing it out and pondering application to my own life. I also keep a blank notepad beside me because God often brings to my mind things that I need to do and I make a quick note.
Typically with this method you wouldn’t necessarily read as broadly as you might with the time otherwise. Alternatively you might also be more selective in where you read from – for example spending more time in Psalms than in perhaps the first five books (the Pentateuch).
Slowly moving through the text allowing ourselves to soak in it and respond to what we find there is a great practice, however, it may not be for everyone. Personally I’ve found this more effective the longer I’ve been a Christian. If you are new believer, you might prefer the hunger based method for the moment.
Ways to read the Bible – hunger based
There are several ways to read the Bible that I’ve used over the years and there may be others that you can think of, but in the next few posts I’m going to explore a few of thee and where and when I’ve used them – and where you might like to use them too.
The first of these I’m calling “hunger based” because it is not set on reading a specific amount of scripture or keeping a pace – it is based on filling a spiritual hunger. This method is ideal for new believers and believers who have a hunger to know Christ and broadly understand the will of the Lord.
Simply put it means just reading. You might start in John 1 and end in John 5. It really doesn’t matter how long you read for, the key thing is that you are engaged and taking in the word as you read. You might read lots and find it doesn’t really strike your heart or just read one verse and “camp” on it for 30 minutes.
This method is also a great way to familiarize yourself with scripture as you can take in whole books (e.g. Ephesians) or even large narrative passages (e.g. 1 Samuel) really easily which allows you to get a broad understanding of the sections, themes and focus of the Bible.
Now this might also seem to be a lazy approach to reading – and it may, however, lazily reading the Bible is better than no reading. Hopefully in the next few posts you’ll get a few ideas for other ways to read the Bible which might help solve lazy reading from ignorance of alternative methods.
The church is persecuted today
You probably know that more Christians are killed for their faith in Jesus today than ever before. There are many countries around the world where people who turn to Christ for salvation don’t live very long after doing so.
There are many countries where this is the case. For instance North Korea, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, India, China, Pakistan and Iran are all at the top of the list of countries where Christians are being killed regularly (if not daily). These countries along side Eritrea and Vietnam are the worlds 10 worst persecutors of Christians.
Take for example the following story from Somalia:
David Abdulwahab Mohamed Ali was born and raised in Somalia until he was forced to flee to Yemen following the political turmoil that engulfed his home country.
Like almost all Somalis, David was also a Muslim. He was exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ when he was living as refugee in Yemen. In 1995, he committed his life to Jesus Christ. But living as Christian in Yemen was difficult for him and he was forced once again to leave for another country. This time he headed to Ethiopia, where Christians make up the majority of the population.
After long years in exile, he traveled back to his native Somalia to visit his family and friends. His relatives must have observed the change that David had undergone. They wanted to know if he was still a Muslim.
On April 22, 2008, at 4:30 PM, one of David’s cousins led two other members of the Islamic extremist group Al-Shabab to David and asked him if he was a Muslim or an infidel. He answered, “Neither.”
They asked, “Then what are you?” He answered, “Waxaan ahay Masiixi,” which means, “I am a follower of the Messiah.”
At this, David’s cousin was enraged and humiliated. In Somalia’s strict Muslim society, David’s conversion to Christianity brought enormous shame on his family. His cousin’s response was to pull out a gun and shoot David. The other two extremists did the same, and the three continued shooting David until their Muslim “honor” had been avenged.
This and many other stories are chronicled in the International Christian Concern “Hall of Shame” for 2009. The Hall of Shame reads a bit like a cross between a political summary and Foxes Book of Martyrs, but is well worth reading.
It is also worth subscribing to the Voice of the Martyrs newsletter or contacting a VOM representative at your church. We who live safely in the west should be actively seeking to help our brothers and sisters in Christ who are subject to persecution. We must start by understanding the situation they are in. We also need to pray and give to help them out.
There are a number of organizations I would recommend. One is the Voice of the Martyrs which is dedicated to helping persecuted believers and telling their stories. The other is the Barnabas fund which is only focused on helping believers, but not restricted just to countries of persecution.
Take the time to find out more, and see what you can do to help – we can help!
On what media we should consume
After my book review earlier this week, I thought I’d follow up on some of my thoughts on media.
I noted there that I thought the book could have gone further in a number of points, and I mentioned the excuse that the person making the excuse saw through.
There are other excuses that were not covered – such as the notion of needing "time to blob". Saints in previous generations didn’t have TV or movies as a blob tool and used the time for more productive activities, so this notion in my opinion is a relatively hollow excuse that reveals a self-centeredness beneath the surface. A further rebuttal of the "blob" excuse is that if you are watching TV or movies to blob, you are hardly going to be engaging your brain enough to analyse and discern whether you even should watch the content before you.
Taking a look at content
In terms of examining content, there are some very clear guidelines in scripture that we can take into consideration when thinking about what we should or should not watch. The first one is "what does Christ think of this content?" To discover this, one thing we can do is to examine the Word of God looking for the things that God does and does not approve of. Passages such as the following should be high on our list of things to consider:
"You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord." (Lev 19:12)
If we love the Lord with all our hearts (or say we do), shouldn’t using His name as a curse word be something that is offensive to us? And if it is offensive, should we be entertaining ourselves with these movies or TV programs? This seems to be a major inconsistency.
"You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination." (Lev 18:22)
Media glorifying homosexuality is promoting something that is an abomination to the Lord – should we entertain ourselves with this?
"A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God." (Deut 22:5)
This would speak to media promoting cross dressing (e.g. Priscilla Queen of the Desert) – if God despises it, perhaps we should view it just as critically?
"For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the Lord your God." (Deut 25:16)
There seems to be an increasing number of movies that fail to portray, never mind promote a biblical view of justice (think Oceans 11 for example).
"There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you." (Deut 18:10)
This would speak to movies and TV that glorifies magic, witchcraft and other cultic practices – which today is a wide number.
Legalism?
Now, I need to state here that I’m not trying to be legalistic. As Christians we are called to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength (Deut 10:12, Mark 12:30). The problem is that in the west we have to contend with the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride in possessions (1 John 2:15-17), and watching media that glorifies these very desires, while promoting that which our Lord hates seems to make a mockery of what we say we believe, not to mention that it seems far from Paul’s encouragement to:
"…put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (Rom 13:14)
How does this work?
For what it is worth, It might be helpful to explain how we work things in our household.
Firstly we don’t have programmed TV in the home. We have a small TV downstairs, but it is not connected to an aerial, satellite dish or other receiver. IMHO TV is simply not worth the advertisements and the effort to figure out what is worth watching and what is not, so we choose not to have programmed TV in the home at all.
When it comes to movies, we do have a few in the home. These are movies that have no blasphemy in them, and which do not glorify things that God deems an abomination. This does not mean we have no movies with magic in the house – what it means is that if a movie conveys magic as a good thing or even something neutral that can be used for good, it is not a movie we will have in the house.
We are quite critical of what we have, and sometimes catch something we hadn’t heard (or seen) before – in this case the movie in question goes in the bin (unless of course it was hired – which we rarely do)
Needless to say, there are not many movies in the house (which is fine with me) and the movies we do have in the house are generally children’s movies or documentaries.
Obedience in spite of how we feel
It is also noteworthy, that we may not feel convicted about what we watch and regard it as sin, in fact we are generally hardened to them. However, underneath the hardness, the Spirit of God is there and He gives us a desire to honour the Lord which we need to allow to inform our "feelings". More on this another time.
Each of us is responsible before the Lord for the media we watch and the media we let our children watch. I hope these thoughts can help you in your considerations of what media you consume and ultimately serve you in your walk with Christ.
Book Review – Worldliness
I’ve just finished reading a number of books and thought I might post a few reviews over the coming weeks.
The first is called "Worldliness" and is written by a collection of Sovereign Grace authors and edited by C J Mahaney. It has a Foreword by John Piper and its endorsements are a who’s who of contemporary evangelicalism.
Overall I enjoyed this book. I particularly liked the chapters "God, my heart and my stuff" and "God, my heart and my clothes". These are both very thorough chapters on their topic and will serve all readers well.
Clothes – well covered
As a father of three girls "God, my heart and my clothes" gave me a lot to consider – particularly as my girls are getting to the age that they will begin caring about clothes more in the coming years. This chapter is written both to women and men and occasionally asks "do you" questions – to women, although I can’t help but wonder what proportion of the books readers will be women as compared to men. Having said that, I hope that every God fearing woman would read this book, as I fear few seem to understand the temptation that men wanting to walk holy lives undergo on a daily basis due to the way many women clothe themselves. This chapter is a very honest and well aimed discussion on modesty much needed in the church today.
Does it go far enough?
The biggest disappointment for me in this book was really a very minor point that I would make with regards to the chapters "God my heart and my music" and "God, my heart and media". At the end of the day I personally would have put a little more emphasis on where entertainment fits into the daily priorities of a person seeking to honour God. The chapter on media did at least ask questions about how much time is spent watching movies and TV, but both chapters focused dominantly on the content we listen to rather than asking the believer how the Lord would like them to fill their time.
In addition some points that should have been made more of were in my opinion left hanging. For example when Craig Cabaniss recounts the following his conclusion seems to miss the point he is making:
Recently, a lady in our church communicated to me her resistance to the idea of curbing media consumption; she believed that viewing current TV programs and movies enabled her to better relate to the lost. But she came to question her own reasoning: "Am I lowering my standards to stay up to date with our culture while not really reaching anyone by doing so?" I respect her for her humility and honesty. She asks a discerning question (Worldliness, P45-46)
Craigs conclusion of this paragraph is summarised in the first sentence that follows it:
In reality, it isn’t necessary to be a media glutton to share the gospel effectively. (ibid, P46)
Craig is absolutely right. However, I would have gone a little further and pointed out that we can use all sorts of excuses (such as viewing current TV programs and movies" enables us to better reach the lost), however, most Christians spend an inordinately large proportion of time consuming media compared to the miniscule time we spend doing the work of the Lord.
There is much more to be said on what media we should watch and what should guide our content decisions. At the end of the day, I’m convinced that we are far too lax in what we watch considering what we say we believe, but I’ll save this for another post later this week.
Thumbs up
Having said this, I’d like to reiterate that this is a small thing given what the book delivers overall. In reality taking a good look at the content we take in is a very good starting point, not to mention the transformation that will take place in the hearts of those who prayerfully consider the chapters on "stuff" and "clothes".
I recommend this book to you whole heartedly. Purchase it from the Sovereign Grace site to support their work or click here to purchase on Amazon.
Managing desires
One of the key differences between popular culture today and biblical Christianity is how we respond to our desires.
(more…)
New year thinking
I don’t much go for new years resolutions (Col 2:20-23 is why), but I normally take the opportunity at new year to revisit what I’m thinking about for the next 12 months. I do this by considering again my priorities and how I’m going with those priorities and think through what I could do better and then translate this into a series of goals that I try and achieve over the next 12 months. Each year I get a little better and more thought out at this, so I learn as I go.
Here is my list of priorities for 2009 (in order of importance):
- My walk with the Lord
- My responsibilities as husband and leader of the home
- My responsibilities as a father
- My ministry and job
- My health and general wellbeing
You could split the fourth one into two parts, which would possibly help work through it, but as both are something that the Lord has called me to that are subordinate to my family responsibilities, I’ve put them together in importance.
Next I might do a mini SWOT analysis of them. SWOT is an acronym that stands for Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, each of these being a title for an area to consider. For example what are the strengths and weaknesses I see in my children? What threats to them and opportunities for teaching are there for me to consider?
I normally find that when doing a SWOT analysis, I end up with a list as long as my arm of things that I can do to to sort out the given priority. Rather than do a million things, I’ll think about what one area should I focus on and how would I describe what success in that one thing if I was to describe it to someone else? There will be a million things I could try and do, but I can only focus on one or two things and do them well. This becomes the goal I want to achieve for the year.
Once I have my goals, I’ll then think through what I need to do to achieve the goals, and start putting these things down on paper. Some may be new regular habits (which may force other habits out), some may be a process where I need to do a little bit each week or month to achieve it. This makes the goals achievable. Without this plan of things I need to do, my chances of achieving my goals are slim.
Finally, I need to run all this by someone I can trust (generally my wife) and then get her input. This is followed by refinement (often following "and where will you get the time to do all that?") and eventually a consensus and buy in on what I can do over the next year to meet these goals.
If you are considering doing something similar, you may need to modify the process – I’m very analytical, so this works for me – your mileage may vary, so modify it to suit your needs. I’ve written on the principles behind this before which are in part based on a variety of sources, as well as a sermon by Mark Driscoll a few years back. Both of these are in this post, more available here.
Thank you for reading this blog – I appreciate your support, and I wish you all the best in the Lords service for 2009!
Tozer on Exalting God and transformed lives
“Be thou exalted” (Psalm 21:13) is the language of victorious spiritual experience. It is a little key to unlock the door to great treasures of grace. It is central in the life of God in the soul. Let the seeking man reach a place where life and lips join to say continually, “Be thou exalted,” and a thousand minor problems will be solved at once. His Christian life ceases to be the complicated thing it had been before and becomes the very essence of simplicity
Loathing honey – part 2
Interestingly, the nations of the west in this position are founded in Christianity, and for this God seems to have blessed them richly. However, this blessing has become a god to most and today the blessing has become a curse as man is enticed by the lure of all manner of shiny objects that attract attention – attention that should be given to repentance and worship of the Christ who is worthy of it.
Israel often thought of themselves as the people of God and figured that because of this they would not come under condemnation. History demonstrates clearly that this is not the case, yet the church of Christ looks at itself the same way and things that because we are under grace we will never be judged.
Yet, judgment begins in the house of the Lord! Look at the indictments on the seven churches in Revelation 2-3 for a brief example that indeed Christ will judge his church. Recall the death of Ananias and Sapphira to remember that the church should be a people of fear (Acts 5:1-11). Or bear in mind the condemnation and astute circumstantial reading of the apostle Paul on the believers in Corinth who were taking the Lords supper without regard to sin and Christ and suffering sickness and death as a result of it (1 Cor 11:29-30).
The problem as we saw last time is that we are filled with pleasures and good things that preoccupy us so that we have not time or room for Christ in our lives. We have been taken up with the world so much that there are minimal affections for the one who truly deserves and desires those affections.
Here are some practical things we can prayerfully consider doing to help change our hearts:
- Exchange TV, movies and music for reading the Bible or godly books or listening to sermons or an audio bible
- Memorize scripture – a verse a week is 52 verses a year
- Get more sleep
- Be regularly in the word of God – every morning (after getting a good nights sleep)
- Figure out what distracts from this and remove it from your life or work hard to minimise the distraction (Heb 12:1-2). Dont try and do it in one shot – little by little – or in bigger steps – as suits you
- Get serious about sin – and confess it before God and ask Him to change your heart toward it – even if you don’t want to
- When you sit down to do an activity ask yourself “Is this going to help my walk with Christ or someone elses walk with Christ?”
- When engaging with unbelievers look for and take opportunities to tell them the good news
- Simplify your life. Own what you will use regularly to the glory of God and deny yourself anything else – if you already have the “anything else” refer to point 5
I’m sure you can think of others.
The key to this working is your answer to the following question: Are you serious about denying yourself and following Christ? I pray you are.
Loathing honey – part 1
I’ve just come back from a week in Samoa. It was great to get away, and I feel much more on top of things and ready to get into the last six weeks of 2008.
Before heading to Samoa, I committed to my wife that I’d take no technology with me – no laptop, my cellphone stays off (apart from occaisional calls home to say hi to our children) and no email. Initially, I was very cagey about doing it, but having spent a few days there like this and seeing how the Samoan people live, I’ve come away having learned something – we are full and distracted.
When I cam e back I came across this proverb:
“One who is full loathes honey, but to one who is hungry everything bitter is sweet” (Prov 27:7)
In the west we live in a world rich with sumptuous pleasures possibly unlike anything the world has ever seen before. We have things to read, watch, listen to, and do in abundance. Our lives are full. Even without a TV and without going to many movies my life is filled with all sorts of trivial things. We just don’t need it all.
Is it therefore any wonder that most people in the western church are completely ineffective for Christ?
We often look at the letter to the church in Laodicea and while we acknowledge that it is an indictment on the western church, we normally fail to see that we ourselves are part of the problem. It is striking that the church in Laodicea were both lukewarm and rich. Isn’t that a description of us? We are rich – even the poorest – and generally western Christians are luke warm as well.
Christ said that these would be spat out (Rev 3:16). In Matthew 13:18-23 we read of the four types of soil – one is choked by the “cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches” and “proves unfruitful” (Matt 13:22). In John 15:1-11 we read that those who do not bear fruit are cast off and burned.
“One who is full loathes honey”
There is an assumption in this verse about honey. The assumption is that the honey is good. In scripture honey is always seen as a good thing – desirable and sweet. It is used to describe the commandments and word of God (Ps 19:9-10, Ps 119:103). It is also used as a description of wisdom to the soul (Prov 24:13-14).
We have great wealth. And that great wealth is killing the church and causing it to be largely unaffected. Each of us are called to be at war with the desires of the flesh, to put them to death (Col 3:5-8). We are to find no joy in the things of the world (1 John 2:15 – “do not love the world” – the word love here means “To esteem, love, indicating a direction of the will and finding one’s joy in something” (Zodhiates, Word Study Dictionary, G25)) and to have no affection toward them (1 John 2:15 – “If anyone loves the world” – love here means have “affectionate regard, goodwill, benevolence”)
Yet not only do we take affection in them, we fail to have the same affection toward God! I’m speaking to myself here as much as to anyone else. We all need to challenge ourselves with regards to what we have and what we have affection for. If there is anything we have more affection for than God, we have traded what is rightfully his for something that is not half as worthy.
We have become so full with the affection of all the things around us, that we have failed to see that there is nothing sweeter than honey, so we discard the best for the rest.
In the next post I’ll look at some practical steps that we can take to start dealing with this rampant unchecked affection.
