Holy Ghost: Special and Peculiar Gift

That "Christ dwells in our hearts by faith," and carries on His inward work by His Spirit, is clear and plain. But if we mean to say that beside, and over, and above this there is some mysterious indwelling of Christ in a believer, we must be careful what we are about. Unless we take care, we shall find ourselves ignoring the work of the Holy Ghost. We shall be forgetting that in the Divine economy of man's salvation election is the special work of God the Father--atonement, mediation, and intercession, the special work of God the Son--and sanctification, the special work of God the Holy Ghost. We shall be forgetting that our Lord said, when He went away, that He would send us another Comforter, who should "abide with us" for ever, and, as it were, take His place. (John xiv. 16.) In short, under the idea that we are honouring [sic] Christ, we shall find that we are dishonouring [sic] His special and peculiar gift--the Holy Ghost (J. C. Ryle, Holiness, xiii).

Doctrine and Morals - Worship and Worldview

According to Scripture, Christian worship and Christian worldview are pop riveted together by the Holy Spirit. "But the hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (John 4:23-24).

Lex orandi est lex credenda et agenda. (The rule of prayer is the rule of belief and of action.) Worldview (i.e., beliefs, morals, actions, etc.) flows from worship. Worship determines worldview. This means you cannot have Christian morals (truth) without Christian worship (Spirit-led-doctrine-and-practices). A society that attempts to separate the two is doomed.

Consider this lengthy excerpt by John Piper (quoting William Wilberforce) on the relationship between Christian doctrine (worship) and Christian morals.

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"William Wilberforce is famous for his lifelong, and finally successful, battle against the African slave trade. It stunned me, when I recently read his one major book, A Practical View of Christianity, that his diagnosis of the moral weakness of Britain was doctrinal.

The fatal habit of considering Christian morals as distinct from Christian doctrines insensibly gained strength. Thus the peculiar doctrines of Christianity went more and more out of sight, and as might naturally have been expected, the moral system itself also began to wither and decay, being robbed of that which should have supplied it with life and nutriment (A Practical View of Christianity, ed. Kevin Charles Belmonte (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), p. 198).

"Even more stunning was the fact that Wilberforce made the doctrine of justification the linchpin in his plea for moral reform in the nation ...

...RESULT FROM THE MISTAKEN CONCEPTION ENTERTAINED OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY. They consider not that Christianity is a scheme "for justifying the ungodly" [Romans 4:5], by Christ's dying for them "when yet sinners" [Romans 5:6-8], a scheme "for reconciling us to God--when enemies" [Romans 5:10]; and for making the fruits of holiness the effects, not the cause, of our being justified and reconciled (Ibid., p. 64. The SMALL CAPS is his emphasis.).

"... Many public people say that changing society requires changing people, but few show the depth of understanding Wilberforce does concerning how that comes about. For him the right grasp of the central doctrine of justification and its relation to sanctification--an emerging Christlikeness in private and public--were essential for the reformation of the morals of England" (John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ, 24-26).

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Christlike > Talents

"It is not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus" (Charles Spurgeon quoting M'Cheyne in Lectures to My Students, 2).

Prayer: Effectual Fervent Prayer That Avails Much

"But, after all, the intention and close application of the mind, the lively exercises of Faith and Love, and the outgoings of holy desire towards God, are so essentially necessary to Prayer, that without these in sincerity, the best and most proper language is but a lifeless image. If we had the tongue of men and angels, and have not the heart of humble serious Christians in Prayer, we are but as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. It is only the effectual fervent prayer, the inwrought inlaid prayer that avails much. Thus therefore we ought to approve ourselves to God, in the integrity of our hearts, whether we pray by, or without a pre-composed Form" (Matthew Henry, A Method for Prayer, vii).

Eucharist: Joyful Feast

"Friends, this is the joyful feast of the people of God." (Quoted from The Worshipbook: Services and Hymns in This Is My Body: The Presence of Christ in Reformation Thought, ed. Thomas J. Davis).

Feed the Sheep: Simple - Saved by Faith

From 1 Peter 5:1-5,

The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; Neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.

This was the text from the first pastoral exhortation and lecture for ministerial training, given by Pastor Nate Harlan of Trinity Pastors College in January, 2010. Those pastoral exhortations were similar to Charles Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students, "colloquial, familiar, full of anecdote, and often humorous." In that first lecture, however, Pastor Harlan implored with sobriety that I desire and learn to "Feed the sheep with simplicity." (Not because the Saints are simplistic or simpletons and dull-witted, but because the Gospel is simple -- it is gift, it is grace.)

Since that first charge was delivered a deep conviction has solidified: to "feed the sheep in simplicity" is best accomplished when the Saints are taught that "the glory of Christ is the most precious reality in the universe" (John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ, 14). But what is the glory of Christ? In the Gospel of John, there is a pun/world-play used when Christ is raised on the cross: Christ was raised up on the cross: Christ was raised, meaning "lifted-up", and Christ was raised up, meaning "glorified", on the cross. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son..." This is the glory of Jesus Christ: he laid down his life as a penal substitute for the atonement of the sins of those given to him by the Father. The glory of Christ is that no human being has ever contributed to their justification. He accomplished everything; he deserves all the credit for what he accomplished.

Feeding the sheep in simplicity means this: declaring that Salvation is based solely on the merits of Jesus Christ, and is solely the result of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to the Believer. The Saints contribute nothing to their salvation. It is Christ who has accomplished everything.

The message is simple. Salvation is a gift that the just receive by faith. Only those clothed with humility will receive the simple grace of Salvation. So, "Feed the sheep with simplicity."

Drama: Pentecost

From A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship: commenting on on the portion of Peter's sermon recorded in Acts 2:37-39, Michael Horton exclaims,

Now that's drama! At Pentecost the Holy Spirit descends to empower the proclamation of his Word and to bring about the acceptance of it by sinners who were otherwise hostile to it. Then he sweeps them into that pentecostal reality through baptism into Christ and the plot that connects us to those who played their parts before us and who now cheer us on from the stands (14-15).

Worship: Biblical, Not Pragmatic

"[A] ministry based on pragmatism is built on sand regardless of whether it is more traditional or contemporary" (Michael Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship, 13).

Prayer: Drawing Near to God, Everywhere and Always

"The scripture describes prayer to be our drawing near to God, lifting up our souls to him, pouring out our hearts before him....A golden thread of heart prayer must run through the web of the whole Christian life; we must be frequently addressing ourselves to God in short and sudden ejaculations, by which we must keep up our communion with him in providences and common actions, as well as in ordinances and religious services" (Matthew Henry, A Method for Prayer, iv).

Tradition: Burying Shoes

Before Julie and I had children we started a family tradition: we would bury shoes in the yard of our rental before we relocated to the next rental. (We moved during the winter once, the ground was too hard to dig with a spade so we threw shoes up in to a tree to hang.)

We have been in our current rental for over three years, so today was our first chance to bury shoes with our children. They loved it. As they say in Fiddler on the Roof, "Tradition!!!"

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The shoes are in the ground. Goodbye, Indiana.

Now, we are ready to move to Montana. 

Hermeneutical Thoughts

Four important qualities of Hermeneutics (Biblical interpretation).

1) Hermeneutics requires humility -- Biblical interpretation requires humility. God is the one telling the story. Sacred Scripture is God's story-telling of history via a divine-historical text. We don't own the story. It is a gift. This means we should handle the divine-story-text with humility and gratitude.

2) Hermeneutics is quasi-scientific  -- Scripture is not an accident. God decided that men under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit would write down in the format of a divine-historical-text the history which is the "external medium of God's redemptive plan" (William DiPuccio, The Interior Sense of Scripture: The Sacred Hermeneutic of John W. Nevin, p. 91). This included semantics and syntax and grammar and words and people and narratives and historical settings and types and figures: the men inspired by the Holy Spirit that wrote down the divine-historical-text used those things as the raw materials for the divine revelation of Sacred Scripture, and Biblical interpretation aims to understand those raw materials. Understanding is not accidental, it takes effort, skill, and serious study, but that is not all that it takes -- it takes much more. Since interpretation is also an art (see next point), Hermeneutics is quasi-scientific.

3) Hermeneutics is an art -- Scripture was written by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Third Person of the Trinity, the Father and the Son's breath-voice-spirit-singer. Accordingly, Scripture is a "musical" book that is rich in symbols and imagery, rhythm and repetition. Therefore, interpreting the Bible is also an art. Why? Because it isn't enough to know all the words to the song, you also have to know the tune. And Scripture has a tune.

4) Hermeneutics is Spirit-led -- Sacred Scripture is a Spirit-book. Scripture was written by the Holy Spirit. And only those who have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit, those that have been given eyes to see and ears to hear the written God-song of God's divine-story-text know the "tune" of Scripture. (They know the "tune" because they've been regenerated, they have a new Father who teaches them songs of their ancestors -- the "tune" sang by Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.) The Bride of Christ is the Church: together her members sing the "tune" of Sacred Scripture, which was taught to her by the beautiful Holy Spirit.

Modernity & Postmodernity: In the End, One in the Same

Somewhere during my undergraduate studies I read something Michael Glodo said about modernity and postmodernity: he observed that both modernity and postmodernity have the same point of origin -- they both begin with the autonomous man -- but (and this is an important qualifier) they each reach radically different conclusions. It is a good observation.

Modernity starts with the autonomous man and concludes with hubrisic optimism (e.g., "Progress! Future! Truth!"). Presumptive brag, that. However: Postmodernity, starts with the autonomous man and concludes with fainthearted nihilism (e.g., "Progress?! Future?! What is Truth?!").  Whinny ninny, that.

So, there is this tension between the former and the latter. There is the old guard (modernity) and the new guard (postmodernity), but really they are comrades of the same guard. Even though they don't like the fact that they are walking together, albeit to a syncopated rhythm, in the end they are one in the same -- an idolater vainly raging against God.

Understanding Covenant: Consists of Five Parts

Excerpts from Ray R. Sutton's That You May Prosper: Dominion by Covenant.

How do we discover the covenant? We have to be convinced that it is the central organizing principle of the Bible. The only way to come to this conclusion is to understand the covenant itself. If we do not know what a covenant consists of, we will never be able to see it in all the segments of the Bible. Then, after we know the meaning of a covenant, we can consider how it works.

So, That You May Prosper has two parts: covenant and dominion. My primary purpose in the "covenant" section is to define the covenant. The Book of Deuteronomy is a model, a place where all of its parts can clearly be seen. Deuteronomy is to the covenant what Romans is to systematic theology. But how do we know Deuteronomy is a covenant? Moses says, "He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments [Words]" (Deut. 4:13). Deuteronomy is the second giving of the Ten Commandments, a "new" covenant so to speak. Moses says of the book as a whole, "Keep the words of this covenant to do them, that you may prosper in all that you do" (Deut. 29:9). Deuteronomy is definitely a covenant document (pp. 14-15).

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The Biblical covenant in Deuteronomy has five parts....Therefore, let us briefly overview the five points of covenantalism (p. 16).

Sutton's list, summarized:

1) True Transcendence -- God is distinct (Deut. 1:1-5).

2) Hierarchy -- God is sovereign in relation to his people and utilizes representatives, e.g., Levites, Priesthood (Deut. 1:6-4:49).

3) Ethics -- stipulations for the law at the heart of God's covenant (Deut. 5-26).

4) Sanctions -- lists of blessings and curses/rewards and punishments attached to covenant (Deut. 27-30).

5) Continuity -- answers the questions "Who is in the covenant and has the Spirit (who empowers them to obey) and takes dominion?" (Deut. 31-34).

Here we see Sutton is echoing and unpackaging Westminster Confession of Faith, "Of God's Covenant with Man" (VII.I.), which teaches that the Triune Lord relates to creation and has chosen to self-disclose knowledge of God to man by mode of covenant.

The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which He has been pleased to express by way of covenant.