Oh Sweet Lorraine

Fred is a 96-year-old man who wrote a love song for his recently deceased wife of 75 years. I had a hard time holding off the tears.




The following are the portions of Tim Keller's "The Meaning of Marriage" that I highlighted. I'm sure that I will be reviewing this post frequently.

Luther's Linguistic Fineries

R. C. Sproul has a very interesting lecture in the The Holiness of God CD bundle entitled, "The Insanity of Luther."

In it, he unabashedly characterizes Luther as almost bordering on being bipolar! While the encouragement to be derived from it, at least for me, is the fact that God uses broken people to accomplish His redemptive purposes, some of Luther's antics are just undeniably and downright hilarious!

Just check out some of his linguistic fineries here: List of Luther's Insults

Life Support Idols

Think of anything that if you lost it you would cease to want to go on living.

Done? Alright. That thing you thought of is your idol.

If you say you thought of God, then that is good. But the reality is that the process of sanctification is such that there will always be idols that we have raised above God to topple down and break.

I have often thought that losing my family would devastate me so much that I pity the fool who would dare antagonize me after—I didn't care if I died in a brawl or what have you. I have made my family my idol.

The Lord loves His children so much that He will not allow us to go on living on idol life support machines. He wants us to truly live. Therefore, He will disillusion us of our idols. He will make us taste the bitterness of them not being able to deliver anymore. When that happens, He will fill us with His consolations and we will indeed taste and see that the Lord is good.

Some Calvin Quotes on Self-Denial

• For as the surest source of destruction to men is to obey themselves, so the only haven of safety is to have no other will, no other wisdom, than to follow the Lord wherever He leads.
  
  
• For he who has learned to look to God in everything he does is at the same time diverted from all vain thoughts. This is that self-denial that Christ so strongly enforces on His disciples from the very outset (Mat 16:24), which, as soon as it takes hold of the mind, leaves no place either, first, for pride, show, and ostentation; or, secondly, for avarice, lust, luxury, effeminacy, or other vices which are engendered by self love (2Ti 3:2-5).
  
  
• For this there is no other remedy than to pluck up by the roots those most noxious pests, self-love and love of victory. This the doctrine of Scripture does, for it teaches us to remember that the endowments that God has bestowed upon us are not our own but His free gifts; those who plume themselves upon them betray their ingratitude. 'Who maketh thee to differ,' says Paul, 'and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?' (1Co 4:7).
  
  
• Then by a diligent examination of our faults let us keep ourselves humble. Thus, while nothing will remain to swell our pride, there will be much to subdue it. Again, we are enjoined, whenever we behold the gifts of God in others, so to reverence and respect the gifts, as also to honor those in whom they reside. God having been pleased to bestow honor upon them, it would ill become us to deprive them of it. Then we are told to overlook their faults, not indeed to encourage by flattering them, but not because of them to insult those whom we ought to regard with honor and good will. In this way, with regard to all with whom we [deal], our behavior will be not only moderate and modest, but also courteous and friendly. The only way by which you can ever attain to true meekness is to have your heart imbued with a humble opinion of yourself and respect for others.
  
  
• The Lord enjoins us 'to do good' (Heb 13:16) to all without exception, though the greater part, if estimated by their own merit, are most unworthy of it. But Scripture subjoins a most excellent reason, when it tells us that we are not to look to what men in themselves deserve, but to attend to the image of God, which exists in all and to which we owe all honor and love. But in those who are of the household of faith (Gal 6:10), the same rule is to be more carefully observed, inasmuch as that image is renewed and restored in them by the Spirit of Christ. Therefore, whoever be the man that is presented to you as needing your assistance, you have no ground for declining to give it to him. Say, 'He is a stranger'; the Lord has given him a mark that ought to be familiar to you: for which reason he forbids you to despise your own flesh (Isa 58:7). Say, 'He is mean and of no consideration'; the Lord points him out as one whom He has distinguished by the luster of His own image. Say that you are bound to him by no ties of duty; the Lord has substituted him as it were into His own place that in him you may recognize the many great obligations under which the Lord has [bound] you to Himself. Say that he is unworthy of your least exertion on his account; the image of God, by which he is recommended to you, is worthy of yourself and all your exertions. But if he not only merits no good, but has provoked you by injury and mischief, still this is no good reason why you should not embrace him in love and visit him with offices of love (Mat 6:14; 18:35; Luk 17:3). 'He has deserved very differently from me,' you will say. But what has the Lord deserved? Whatever injury he has done you, when he enjoins you to forgive him, he certainly means that it should be imputed to himself. In this way only, we attain to what is not to say difficult but altogether against nature: to love those that hate us, render good for evil, and blessing for cursing (Mat 5:44), remembering that we are not to reflect on the wickedness of men, but look to the image of God in them, an image that, covering and obliterating their faults, should by its beauty and dignity allure us to love and embrace them.
  
  
• He alone, therefore, has properly denied himself who has resigned himself entirely to the Lord, placing all the course of his life entirely at His disposal. Happen what may, he whose mind is thus composed will neither deem himself wretched nor murmur against God because of his lot.
  
  
• Those whom the Lord has chosen and honored with His [fellowship] must prepare for a hard, laborious, troubled life, a life full of many and various kinds of evils—it being the will of our heavenly Father to exercise His people in this way while putting them to the proof. Having begun this course with Christ the first-born, He continues it towards all His children. For though that Son was dear to Him above others, the Son in Whom He was 'well pleased' (Mat 3:17; 17:5), yet we see that far from being treated gently and indulgently, we may say that not only was He subjected to a perpetual cross while He dwelt on earth, but His whole life was nothing else than a kind of perpetual cross. The Apostle assigns the reason: 'Though he was a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered' (Heb 5:8). Why then should we exempt ourselves from that condition to which Christ our Head behooved to submit—especially since He submitted on our account that He might in His own person exhibit a model of patience? Wherefore, the Apostle declares that all the children of God are destined to be conformed to Him (Rom 8:29). Hence, it affords us great consolation in hard and difficult circumstances, which men deem evil and adverse, to think that we are holding fellowship with the sufferings of Christ: as He passed to celestial glory through a labyrinth of many woes, so we too are conducted thither through various tribulations. For in another passage, Paul himself thus speaks, 'We must through much tribulation enter the kingdom of God' (Act 14:22). Again, 'That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death' (Phi 3:10). How powerfully should it soften the bitterness of the cross to think that the more we are afflicted with adversity, the surer we are made of our fellowship with Christ, by communion with Whom our sufferings are not only blessed to us, but tend greatly to the furtherance of our salvation.
  
  
• It is of no little importance to be rid of your self-love and made fully conscious of your weakness; so impressed with a sense of your weakness as to learn to distrust yourself; to distrust yourself so as to transfer your confidence to God, reclining on Him with such heartfelt confidence as to trust in His aid and continue invincible to the end, standing by His grace so as to perceive that He is true to His promises and so assured of the certainty of His promises as to be strong in hope.
  
  
• Scripture gives saints the praise of endurance when, though afflicted by the hardships they endure, they are not crushed. Though they feel bitterly, they are at the same time filled with spiritual joy. Though pressed with anxiety, [they] breathe exhilarated by the consolation of God. Still there is a certain degree of repugnance in their hearts because natural sense shuns and dreads what is adverse to it, while pious affection, even through these difficulties, tries to obey the divine will. In bearing them patiently, we are not submitting to necessity, but resting satisfied with our own good. The effect of these thoughts is that to whatever extent our minds are contracted by the bitterness that we naturally feel under the cross, to the same extent will they be expanded with spiritual joy. Hence arises thanksgiving, which cannot exist unless joy be felt. But if the praise of the Lord and thanksgiving can emanate only from a cheerful and gladdened breast—and there is nothing that ought to interrupt these feelings in us—it is clear how necessary it is to temper the bitterness of the cross with spiritual joy.

Ancient Aliens Debunked! LOL.

The Creation of Giorgio Tsoukalos

Get it here.

Carl Trueman on Judges 19: How Low the People of God Can Go

I expect this sermon to be a veritable blessing to you as it has been to me.

Some of the points that stuck:

1. Hospitality, or charity (love), must be a character trait that grows in ever-increasing measure within a Christian because his Father, God, is a hospitable God. There can be no love without self-denial, and this brings us to the second point.

2. Male headship is the right of the husband to lay down his life for the wife as Christ laid His down for the church. A very important truth for the survival and sustained flourishing of a marriage.

3. Lastly, without daily dependence on the Triune God, i.e., the love and forgiveness of the Father, the mediation of the Son, and the guidance and enabling of the Holy Spirit, through prayer, feeding on God's Word, and attendance to the means of grace, even the Christian can go as low as the chief characters portrayed in the chapter—a very sobering prospect.

So without further ado, I invite you to press play and be edified.

I Don't Care!

I'm feeling kinda good today and in the mood for a blog post.

What I'd like to share is a biblical insight that has made a profound impact on me. It is the kind of insight that will—at the risk of sounding pedestrian—revolutionize your life, and the insight is this: I DON'T CARE!

That's right. I don't care what you think of me, I don't even care what I think of me. Now before you pass this off as in keeping with inane youthful rebellion, I'd like you to reckon with Paul's words first:

"But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God." (1 Cor. 4:3-4)

What is Paul saying? He's not recommending throwing off the "shackles" of consideration for others, neither is he advocating a reckless abandon bordering on masochism. What Paul is saying is that his identity is so bound up in Christ, so inextricably linked with his union with Him, that the only verdict on his person that matters is Christ's. And what is this verdict:

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." (Rom. 8:1)

Are you beginning to taste and savor the utterly delicious freedom of this truth? It offers, not rudeness, nor unkindness, but the spiritual power and strength to enjoy all that is ours in Christ, to be defined by this, and to live our lives not in a perennial state of seeking a righteous judgment from others, ourselves, and things, but as free men. As grateful men.

Timothy Keller adds:

"Paul was a man of incredible stature. I think it would be hard to disagree with the view that he is one of the six or seven most influential leaders in the history of the human race. One of the most influential people in history. He had enormous ballast, tremendous influence, incredible confidence. He moved ahead and nothing fazed him. And yet, in 1 Timothy, he says ‘Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief’ (1 Tim. 1:15 NKJV). Not I was chief, but I am chief. Or ‘I am the worst’. This is off our maps. We are not used to someone who has incredible confidence volunteering the opinion that they are one of the worst people. We are not used to someone who is totally honest and totally aware of all sorts of moral flaws – yet has incredible poise and confidence.

We cannot do that. Do you know why? Because we are judging ourselves. But Paul will not do that. When he says that he does not let the Corinthians judge him nor will he judge himself, he is saying that he knows about his sins but he does not connect them to himself and his identity. His sins and his identity are not connected. He refuses to play that game. He does not see a sin and let it destroy his sense of identity. He will not make a connection. Neither does he see an accomplishment and congratulate himself. He sees all kinds of sins in himself – and all kinds of accomplishments too – but he refuses to connect them with himself or his identity. So, although he knows himself to be the chief of sinners, that fact is not going to stop him from doing the things that he is called to do.

We could not be more different from Paul. If I think of myself as a bad person, I do not have any confidence. If I think of myself as a sinner, as someone who is filled with pride, someone filled with lust and anger and greed and all the things that Paul says he is filled with, I have no confidence. No, because we are judging ourselves. We set our standards and then we condemn ourselves. The ego will never be satisfied that way. Never!

Paul is saying something astounding. ‘I don’t care what you think and I don’t care what I think.’ He is bringing us into new territory that we know nothing about. His ego is not puffed up, it is filled up. He is talking about humility – although I hate using the word ‘humility’ because this is nothing like our idea of humility. Paul is saying that he has reached a place where his ego draws no more attention to itself than any other part of his body. He has reached the place where he is not thinking about himself anymore. When he does something wrong or something good, he does not connect it to himself any more." (The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness)

Chaotic Change

The process of being conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ, called sanctification, is a lifelong dynamic of the Holy Spirit revealing the nature and extent of indwelling sin, with the attendant horrors of being confronted with the reality of our ugly selves in the light of God's beautiful holiness. This also involves the Spirit leading us by the hand and incessantly reorienting our hearts and minds toward the Goal through the Gospel. Exhausted and horrified, we are grateful for the righteousness, peace, and joy that is ours in the midst of our failures and we are invigorated by undeserved grace. We get up, dust ourselves, and pursue Christ once again in grateful obedience.

The fact of the matter is that change is most often a process and seldom an event. Change happens chaotically. It comes unannounced, in fits and starts. We don't wake up and say, "Hey, I think I'll create all kinds of change today." Change is pushed upon us by a persevering Redeemer, who will not walk away from the work he has begun...He will put the need of change before us in the most inopportune moments. He will not submit to our schedule or agenda for our day. He has not promised that change will be enjoyable each time or a comfortable process over the long haul. He has promised to stay near us, giving us everything we need, and he has guaranteed that we will be more than we ever thought we could be. (He will not cease working until we are like Jesus. Now, how's that for a goal!) So, he calls us to be patient. He calls us to be willing to wait. He calls us to continue when continuing is hard, and as we are continuing, to look for any way we can to incarnate his transforming love. (Paul D. Tripp, What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage [Illinois:Crossway, 2010], 131-132)

Van Til the Street Preacher

These images of Cornelius Van Til street preaching may seem uncharacteristic of a Reformed apologist and churchman like himself. The stereotype is that numbers are added to the church through the procreation of covenant children by believing parents. While this is certainly true and not something to be embarrased about, there is also nothing un-Reformed about what Van Til did. He simply made the antithesis hit hard. What does this mean?

It means every human being is guilty and is aware of this guilt to one extent or another by virtue of being made in the image of God. Even Francis Turretin posits that there is actually no such entity as an absolute, theoretical atheist, though practical ones abound. The voice of conscience is strong in every man, condemning imperfect obedience to the Law. While the unbeliever tries incessantly to suppress this voice, the Holy Spirit uses the means of the declaration of the Law and the guilt it brings, followed by the Gospel with its attendant grace, to effect the faith that justifies. When the unbeliever is translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light, he passes from one side of the antithesis to another.

So, in fact, Van Til was merely being a good agent of divine concursus!

Calvin the Peacemaker

Breaking the bond of fellowship between brethren is no small matter. In fact, it is so serious that Paul could declare, "As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned" (Titus 3:10-11).

Aside from foundational doctrinal differences, churches in fraternal relations, I would think, have no valid grounds for cutting off communion with each other.

Regarding the matter, the ff. piece exposes John Calvin's heart:

Self-Knowledge

"Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. In the second place, those blessings which unceasingly distil to us from heaven, are like streams conducting us to the fountain. Here, again, the infinitude of good which resides in God becomes more apparent from our poverty. In particular, the miserable ruin into which the revolt of the first man has plunged us, compels us to turn our eyes upwards; not only that while hungry and famishing we may thence ask what we want, but being aroused by fear may learn humility. For as there exists in man something like a world of misery, and ever since we were stript of the divine attire our naked shame discloses an immense series of disgraceful properties every man, being stung by the consciousness of his own unhappiness, in this way necessarily obtains at least some knowledge of God. Thus, our feeling of ignorance, vanity, want, weakness, in short, depravity and corruption, reminds us, that in the Lord, and none but He, dwell the true light of wisdom, solid virtue, exuberant goodness. We are accordingly urged by our own evil things to consider the good things of God; and, indeed, we cannot aspire to Him in earnest until we have begun to be displeased with ourselves. For what man is not disposed to rest in himself? Who, in fact, does not thus rest, so long as he is unknown to himself; that is, so long as he is contented with his own endowments, and unconscious or unmindful of his misery? Every person, therefore, on coming to the knowledge of himself, is not only urged to seek God, but is also led as by the hand to find him." (John Calvin, Institutes I.1.1)

It is interesting how Calvin opens up his magnum opus extolling the virtues of self-knowledge.

Noteworthy is the fact that this is no gnostic inward-curving but a knowledge of self borne out of a knowledge of God. If all of the Christian life is repentance, as rightly asserted by Martin Luther, then all of this life entails an increase in both the knowledge of God and self, which increase is facilitated by the perichoresis between the two, resulting in repentance that would only cease upon death or the return of Christ.

Knowing oneself through the circumstances of life is only possible if these particular events are interpreted through the grid of God's Word. To benefit from the ups and downs of life in terms of engendering the repentance that breeds sanctification, love and knowledge of God's Word is indispensable.

Write More to Read More

The bulk of my reading lately has been focused on family and marriage books. I got myself Paul Tripp's "What Did You Expect?? (Redeeming the Realities of Marriage)", Andreas J. Köstenberger's "God, Marriage, and Family (Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation)", and Richard Phillips' "The Masculine Mandate (God's Calling to Men)."

Providence seems to have deemed it fitting to rock this area in my life in order to improve it, and the Lord did not leave me wanting for wisdom by guiding me to these works penned by His servants.

With that said, I realize I need to up the ante on my reading. I still have Turretin's IET and Bavinck's RD to go through, along with a host of other books that are more of the ST and BT type. Alan Parsons Project got it right when it sang, "time, keeps flowing like a river." I need to make more time for reading. But I realized that I read more when I wrote and I have not blogged for a couple of months now. So to read more, I need to write more.

This is to tell you that I plan on blogging more (in order to read more) and hopefully to have it continue on until the Lord's appointed time of cessation.

By His grace, may this blog bless you as it has blessed me in its writing.

Street Smart

It is enough for us to know that he bare our infirmities, though free from sin and undefiled. Then, as to the ancient and Levitical priests, the Apostle says, that they were subject to human infirmity, and that they made atonement also for their own sins, that they might not only be kind to others when gone astray, but also condole or sympathize with them. This part ought to be so far applied to Christ as to include that exception which he mentioned before, that is, that he bare our infirmities, being yet without sin. At the same time, though ever free from sin, yet that experience of infirmities before described is alone abundantly sufficient to incline him to help us, to make him merciful and ready to pardon, to render him solicitous for us in our miseries. The sum of what is said is, that Christ is a brother to us, not only on account of unity as to flesh and nature, but also by becoming a partaker of our infirmities, so that he is led, and as it were formed, to show forbearance and kindness. (John Calvin, Commentary on Hebrews 5:1-6)

The Lord Jesus Christ, as Mediator, was and is, as it were, street smart. He welcomed sinners to Himself in order to give of Himself to them, to unite them to Himself and thus redeem and transform them into His likeness. He was not a sheltered "pastor's kid" who recoiled at every sin and slight. He suffered the effects of sin without being contaminated by it, and thus was able to be a sympathetic Savior.

This aspect of His ministry is not among those exclusive to His charge as Christ. His undershepherds would do well to be street smart on account of His sheep.