Sermon of the Week

The sermon of the week is actually a series on election by Pastor Mike Abendroth.  Pastor Abendroth is a friend of mine from Massachusetts where he is an elder at Bethlehem Bible Church.  This sermon series was very helpful to me as I was starting to come to an understanding of what the Bible meant by election.  The series is formatted as answers to “frequently asked questions” about election.  He was kind enough to give me permission to post them here for you to listen to.

Ministry’s Only Hope: Election Part 1

Ministry\’s Only Hope: Election Part 1

Ministry’s Only Hope: Election Part 2

Ministry\’s Only Hope: Election Part 2

Ministry’s Only Hope: Election Part 3

Election Part 3

Ministry’s Only Hope: Election Part 4

Election Part 4

Ministry’s Only Hope: Election Part 5

Election Part 5

Ministry’s Only Hope: Election Part 6

Election Part 6

Ministry’s Only Hope: Election Part 7

Election Part 7

Ministry’s Only Hope: Election Part 8

Election Part 8

Ministry’s Only Hope: Election Part 9

Election Part 9

Ministry’s Only Hope: Election Part 10

Election Part 10

Song of the Week

Marcus sent me this song to use as song of the week this week and its an awesome one to use to draw your attention to God and His glory.  Sing along and enjoy the God you serve.

Book of the Week

The book of the week is The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God by D.A. Carson.  Here are some quotes from the first chapter to whet your interest:

To put this another way, we live in a culture in which
many other and complementary truths about God are widely
disbelieved. I do not think that what the Bible says about the love
of God can long survive at the forefront of our thinking if it is
abstracted from the sovereignty of God, the holiness of God, the
wrath of God, the providence of God, or the personhood of
God—to mention only a few nonnegotiable elements of basic
Christianity.
The result, of course, is that the love of God in our culture has
been purged of anything the culture finds uncomfortable. The
love of God has been sanitized, democratized, and above all sentimentalized.
This process has been going on for some time. My
generation was taught to sing, “What the world needs now is
love, sweet love,” in which we robustly instruct the Almighty
that we do not need another mountain (we have enough of them),
but we could do with some more love. The hubris is staggering.

Precisely how does one integrate what the Bible says about the
love of God with what the Bible says about God’s sovereignty,
extending as it does even over the domain of evil? What does
love mean in a Being whom at least some texts treat as impassible?
How is God’s love tied to God’s justice?

Download it here.  Or order your own copy here.

Hope you enjoy some of these materials.  Take a look and bring your questions to our next meeting on February 13.

Book of the Week – Suffering and the Sovereignty of God edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor.  It seemed like we were privy to a lot of suffering recently, both globally (earthquake in Haiti) and personally (close friends facing life and death situations).  It seemed like a good time to reflect on the theology of suffering.  This book takes essays from different authors and theologians and compiles them together to develop a Biblical basis for trusting in the sovereignty of God in light of suffering.  Read it online here: http://bit.ly/1an00j

Sermon of the Week – Repentance for the Righteous by Matt Chandler.  Matt Chandler is one of our favorite speakers because of his expository style and honest approach.  I always walk away feeling convicted and in need of repentance.  This sermon is no exception.  He deals with the fact that we all need repentance, and not just for the things we label as terrible sins.  The good, law-abiding, Sunday School-teaching person who thinks his works impress God needs repentance as much as the drunken, rebellious criminal.  Listen here:  http://bit.ly/6CmvBu.

Song of the Week – God has really impressed on me the importance of prayer in the past few weeks, so it was a delight to listen to the song Marcus picked for this week which deals with waiting for God in prayer.  Listen to it here:

Our song of the week is “All I Really Need” (click for a free download) by Mark and Stephen Altrogge.  The song is part of the In A Little While album put out by Sovereign Grace Music.  The focus of the song is that our real need is peace with God through Christ and He has provided that for us.  We pondered a quote by K. Scott Oliphint and Rod Mays in the book Things that Cannot Be Shaken:

Our true need is not physical water or husbands or pleasure, or. . . .  Our true need is for a permanent solution, one that does not ebb or flow with the times, one not subject to the whims and wishes of our fickle hearts.  We need living water.  We need permanent change.  We need the Holy Spirit to unite us to Christ.  In Him we have the True Bread and Living Water, so that we will never be hungry or thirsty again.  All of our needs are met in Him, because in the end, our only real need is to be united to Christ by the Spirit.

Our sermon of the week is “The Holiness of God” by Paul Washer.  Washer discusses what it means for God to be holy and it establishes a high view of God that is foundational for us to understand some of the truths, and some of the hard truths, of the Gospel.

Our book of the week is God is the Gospel by John Piper, which can be downloaded for free from Desiring God ministries.  In God is the Gospel, Piper grounds the magnificence of the Gospel in the fact that we get God.  That God is the primary object of the Gospel.  And that God is the one who initiates and accomplishes the Gospel power in our lives.

Our next meeting will be Saturday, January 16 at 10:00am.  Feel free to join us for some breakfast foods and Bible study.

The Art of Prayer

Listen to more sermons from The Village Church here.

Buy it here.  Read the sermon here.

Here are some excerpts:

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

The promises of Scripture may very roughly be reduced to five heads. It is promised, firstly, that we shall be with Christ; secondly, that we shall be like Him; thirdly, with an enormous wealth of imagery, that we shall have “glory”; fourthly, that we shall, in some sense, be fed or feasted or entertained; and, finally, that we shall have some sort of official position in the universe—ruling cities, judging angels, being pillars of God’s temple. The first question I ask about these promises is: “Why any of them except the first?” Can anything be added to the conception of being with Christ? For it must be true, as an old writer says, that he who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.

It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.

Perhaps it seems rather crude to describe glory as the fact of being “noticed” by God. But this is almost the language of the New Testament. St. Paul promises to those who love God not, as we should expect, that they will know Him, but that they will be known by Him (I Cor. viii. 3). It is a strange promise. Does not God know all things at all times? But it is dreadfully reechoed in another passage of the New Testament. There we are warned that it may happen to any one of us to appear at last before the face of God and hear only the appalling words: “I never knew you. Depart from Me.” In some sense, as dark to the intellect as it is unendurable to the feelings, we can be both banished from the presence of Him who is present everywhere and erased from the knowledge of Him who knows all. We can be left utterly and absolutely outside—repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored. On the other hand, we can be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged.

This week’s song of the week is “How He Loves” by David Crowder.

Listen to the full version on YouTube:

How He Loves

I love the way this song revels in awe at the fact that God loves us.  That He is jealous for us.  We feel awash in the ocean of God’s love and that love transforms us into His image.  Oh how He loves us!

I figured it might be possible to record myself doing a problem on my tablet PC and then post it online at my math website.  It just seemed like it would be too time-consuming to do that.  That’s when I ran across Screentoaster.

Screentoaster runs a Java applet that will record your screen or a portion of the screen, with or without audio.  Since its a Java applet, it is compatible on any operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux).   After recording, you can make quick annotations which appear at the bottom of the screencast.  After finishing the video, you upload it to Screentoaster, which then makes it available via link, embedding, or as a downloadable .mov or .swf file.  The quality is fantastic while the file size is incredibly small.

Here’s an example of a math problem I worked out and posted to my website:

T:  So what did you do this weekend?

S:  I played Xbox most of the weekend and then I watched the new horror movie out.

T:  Well, did you do your homework?

S:  I really don’t see the point in spending so much time on something that’s not going to be useful to me in the future.

T:  Wait, what?

Greg Boyd advocates for what he calls the Christus Victor theory of the atonement.  He rejects the fact that Christ suffered the wrath of God on our behalf and instead says that the cross is really a picture of love overcoming evil through self-sacrifice, if I understand the theory correctly.  On his website he has a series of questions about penal substitution that are meant to cause us to question (and eventually reject) our view.  I went through them in Sunday School and thought I’d post some answers here.  You can see Greg Boyd’s questions about substitutionary atonement here.  I’ll repost the questions in quotes, then answer them.

Does God really need to appease his wrath with a blood sacrifice in order to forgive us? If so, does this mean that the law of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” is the ultimate description of God’s character? And if this is true, what are we to make of Jesus’ teaching that this law is surpassed by the law of love? Not only this, but what are we to make of all the instances in the Bible where God forgives people without demanding a sacrifice (e.g. the prodigal son)?

First of all, why does a Penal Substitution view make the law of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. . . the ultimate description of God’s character”?  This is just unnecessary hyperbole.  It is part of God’s character that He judges sin.  Does Boyd deny that God judges and punishes sin?  Does He really believe that it would be consistent with God’s character to let sin, rebellion against God, go completely unpunished?  And if so, then why will so many people be punished eternally for their sins?  If it is against God’s character to require a penalty for sin, then how do you explain all the passages in the Bible that deal with a penalty for sin?

Secondly, he asks, “What are we to make of Jesus’ teaching that this law is surpassed by the law of love?”  By providing a penal substitution, He demonstrated His love for us.  He sacrificed Himself so that we could avoid the punishment for sin.  In other words, Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice is the basis of the fulfillment of the law and the law of love and grace exists because of the cross.

Finally, he asks, “What are we to make of all the instances in the Bible where God forgives people without demanding a sacrifice (e.g. the prodigal son)?”  The truth is that God does not forgive without demanding a sacrifice.  He provided the sacrifice.  He is able to forgive because the sacrifice was paid once for all by Christ.

If God’s holiness requires that a sacrifice be made before he can fellowship with sinners, how did Jesus manage to hang out with sinners without a sacrifice, since he is as fully divine and as holy as God the Father?

First, while Christ is God, His full glory was veiled when He took on flesh.  I don’t fully understand the “kenosis”, but I believe that while Christ was fully God and fully man, His full glory was veiled so He was approachable.  Moses’ time in the presence of God’s glory left him with a glowing complexion.  We don’t see the same thing happening to the disciples so we assume that His full glory is veiled.

Second, Boyd is begging the question again by assuming there was no sacrifice.  There was a sacrifice.  Christ’s sacrifice which was timeless in eternity and is the basis for anyone at any time being able to approach God.  The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the earth.

If Jesus’ death allows God the Father to accept us, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that Jesus reconciles God to us than it is to say Jesus reconciles us to God? Yet the New Testament claims the latter and never the former (e.g. 2 Cor. 5:18-20). ). In fact, if God loves sinners and yet can’t accept sinners without a sacrifice, wouldn’t it be even more accurate to say that God reconciles God to himself than to say he reconciles us to God? But this is clearly an odd and unbiblical way of speaking.

I think this one has less to do with atonement and more to do with depravity and regeneration.  Its as if Boyd pictures us as wanting to come to God, but God can’t accept us unless He gruesomely murders His Son.  But that is not the picture the Bible paints.  In fact, it is the other way around.  We are dead in our sins and can not exercise ourselves toward God.  We are rebels at war with God.  God desires to reconcile us to Him, so He provides a sacrifice to take our place, and on the basis of the sacrifice of Christ for our sins, He is able to draw us, call us, woo us, and forgive us.  It wasn’t us who were beating on Heaven’s door desiring entrance while God sat and thought, “I’d love to take you in, but I just can’t without killing someone.”  It’s us running from Him as fast and as far as we can and Him saying, “Rather than place the burden and penalty of your sins on you, I will place them on My Son, and on that basis I will bring you back to Me.”

How are we to understand one member of the Trinity (the Father) being wrathful towards another member (the Son) of the Trinity, when they are, along with the Holy Spirit, one and the same God? Can God be truly angry with God? Can God actually punish God?

Just because we don’t understand something does not make it untrue.  I don’t understand the concept of the Trinity itself.  This is a non-argument.  I don’t need Boyd to be able to wrap his head around something in order for me to believe it.

If God the father needs someone to “pay the price” for sin, does the Father ever really forgive anyone? Think about it. If you owe me a hundred dollars and I hold you to it unless someone pays me the owed sum, did I really forgive your debt? It seems not, especially since the very concept of forgiveness is about releasing a debt — not collecting it from someone else.

The very concept of forgiveness is about releasing a debt, but more importantly, it is about taking the debt oneself.  In other words, if you wreck my car and it costs $1000 to fix it, if I forgive you that doesn’t mean the debt goes unpaid.  It means I paid it myself.  God provided the sacrifice Himself.  He paid the debt we could never pay.  That is the basis of God’s forgiveness.

Are sin and guilt the sorts of things that can be literally transferred from one party to another? Related to this, how are we to conceive of the Father being angry towards Jesus and justly punishing him when he of course knew Jesus never did anything wrong?

This brings up the side topic of imputation.  Romans 5 is fairly clear on this topic:  “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.”  Adam’s sin left all in Adam guilty, while Christ’s act of righteousness makes all in Christ righteous.  My sin was placed on Christ, and Christ’s righteousness was placed on me.  How else would I ever be worthy of entering Heaven?  Surely not on my own merit.  Rather, Christ’s righteousness was imputed to me, making me worthy of the glories of Heaven.

If the just punishment for sin is eternal hell (as most Christians have traditionally believed), how does Jesus’ several hours of suffering and his short time in the grave pay for it?

A sinner is punished forever because he can never satisfactorily pay the penalty for sin, so he pays it continuously.  Because Christ was God Incarnate, His sacrifice was sufficient to pay the penalty for sin, and only needed to be offered once.

If the main thing Jesus came to do was to appease the Father’s wrath by being slain by him for our sin, couldn’t this have been accomplished just as easily when (say) Jesus was a one-year-old boy as when he was a thirty-three year old man? Were Jesus’ life, teachings, healing and deliverance ministry merely a prelude to the one really important thing he did – namely, die? It doesn’t seem to me that the Gospels divide up and prioritize the various aspects of Jesus’ life in this way. (I maintain that everything Jesus did was about one thing – overcoming evil with love. Hence, every aspect of Jesus was centered on atonement — that is, reconciling us to God and freeing us from the devil’s oppression.)

In the book of John, Christ repeatedly speaks about how His hour is not yet come as if His ministry was leading up to a certain point when His hour would in fact come or His ministry would reach its climax.  At the time of His passion, He declares that His hour is come, so it would seem that, yes, His ministry was leading up to one thing, namely His death and resurrection.  In fact, the whole Bible leads up to this pictorially and prophetically, through the sacrifices in Genesis, Abraham and Isaac, the Passover, the sacrificial system in the Mosaic law, etc., etc., etc.  All of it points to the sacrifice on the cross.  Paul, looking back, declares the good news of the gospel to be that “He died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again according to the Scriptures.”  Christ did overcome evil with love, but He did it by “bearing my sins in His own body, on the tree.”

Not to be offensive, but if it’s true that God’s wrath must be appeased by sacrificing his own Son – or, if not that, sacrificing all other humans in eternal hell – then don’t we have to conclude that those pagans who have throughout history sacrificed their children to appease the gods’ wrath had the right intuition, even if they expressed it in the wrong way?

Well, that is a bit offensive, but its not even close.  If they had the right intuition, they would be looking to their gods to come down into their midst and, of their own grace, provide a sacrifice that would remove the necessity of sacrifices.  The intuition that they had something worthwhile to offer to a god is as far from Scripture as you can possibly get.

What is the intrinsic connection between what Jesus did on the cross and how we actually live? The Penal Substitution view makes it seem like the real issue in need of resolution is a legal matter in the heavenly realms between God’s holy wrath and our sin. Christ’s death changes how God sees us, but this theory says nothing about how Christ’s death changes us. This is particularly concerning to me because every study done on the subject has demonstrated that for the majority of Americans who believe in Jesus, their belief makes little or no impact on their life. I wonder if the dominance of this legal-transaction view of the atonement might be partly responsible for this tragic state of affairs.

First of all, one issue in need of resolution was a legal matter in the heavenly realms between God’s holy wrath and sin.  Christ’s death did change how God sees us.  That’s the point of the discussion in Romans 3, where Paul declares God to be just and the justifier on the basis of the “propitiation by His blood”.  But this is only part of the picture.  The wider picture has our sins imputed to Christ, and Christ’s righteousness imputed to us.  We are baptized into His death and our sin nature has been put to death by the cross.  The fact that Christ took my sins and paid for them allows me to live a life of freedom from sin.  A proper understanding of the atonement and imputation should and will motivate us to holiness.  If someone’s belief makes little or no impact on their life, as Greg Boyd observes in the majority of Americans, then James and 1 John tell us that they never really believed in the first place.  How can the actions of unbelievers be an indictment on a Christian belief?

But the question that tends to come up is whether or not the medium of hip hop in general (and rap in particular) is an appropriate medium for conveying Biblical truth.  Shai Linne tackles some of those ideas head on and discusses his journey as a Christian and as an artist.  He is intelligent and well-spoken.  He is obviously educated in the reformed tradition (his song, Mission Accomplished, is an excellent defense of Limited Atonement).  I offer up a few quotes from that interview for your contemplation.

I didn’t have to leave my culture in order to become a Christian, but rather allow Christ to inform my expression of my culture.

We’re trying to capitalize on the power of the medium of hip-hop.  One of the benefits that it has is that you’re able to pack a lot of information into a small amount of musical space and that really just lends itself to exposition and some of the deeper things of the Word.

I would never try to force anyone to like hip-hop.  My main thing is, can we unify around the centrality of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.  You don’t have to become a rapper or even enjoy rap, but my hope is that you would appreciate the truth that is being communicated.  That’s the same with any genre. I wouldn’t want to blindly accept anything because it came in a certain package, but I want to Biblically attempt to listen and discern, What’s the content? What is the message that’s being communicated?

So, if you’re a traditionalist, what’s your argument against an artist like Shai Linne.  The shallowness argument is gone.  He traces the roots of hip hop to a positive origin.  And what of his statement about Christ informing the expression of his culture?  Does sanctification require a cultural transformation?  Some interesting thoughts here.