Monthly Archives: May 2014

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Recent Reads

I love to read. By God’s grace I am a pretty fast reader; I usually read a couple books each week. I find it helpful to summarize my thoughts on each book and I offer those thoughts in the hope that you will be encouraged to either read or pass over the given title.

0851514510mSpurgeon: A New Biography by Arnold Dallimore. Tomorrow night I hope to preach a biographical sermon on the Prince so I reread Dallimore’s work in preparation. This simply is the finest introduction to the great Spurgeon. The prose flows nicely and while the book consistently celebrates the great preacher, Dallimore manages to steer clear of hagiography. Pithy quotations  and lively stories saturate the work, making almost every page “edifyingly readable.” After reading Dallimore, I’d move on to Lewis Drummond’s The Prince of Preachers, and then feast on Spurgeon’s magisterial two-volume autobiography. Tolle lege!

9781433528170mCovenantal Apologetics: Principles and Practice in Defense of Our Faith by Scott Oliphint. I find Oliphint to be one of the most underrated theologians and apologists of our time. Lord willing, this latest book will broaden his exposure. Covenantal Apologetics is Oliphint’s effort to recast what has been traditionally categorized as presuppositional apologetics into something more easily explained and practiced. And I believe he succeeds. The overwhelming strength of Oliphint’s approach is how he roots persuasion (apologetics) in the Triune God’s self-revelation in Christ. His ten tenets of the covenantal approach are sound and cogent, and the sample dialogues go a long way in helping readers understand how to put their faith into practice. I still think Frame’s Apologetics to the Glory of God is the best introduction to the presuppositional approach, so I’d start there and then move on to Oliphint’s excellent volume.

DissolutionDissolution by CJ Sansom. I love historical fiction and regularly scour Amazon to find the latest and the greatest. So it was a couple weeks ago that I came across CJ Sansom and his Matthew Shardlake series. Set in 16th century Tudor England, specifically 1537, Dissolution vividly portrays a country divided between the Roman Catholic Church and newly established Church of England. The novel is fast-paced as Shardlake, a lawyer in the employ of vicar general Thomas Cromwell, is sent to investigate the murder of a royal commissioner at a monastery on the south coast. Shardlake is a fascinating character, a hunchback whom Sansom paints with a brilliantly human brush, and the lawyer uncovers all sorts of darkness in the religious institutions of the day. Sansom clearly is a gifted historian and writer, two skill sets not often brought together. PD James is right to call Dissolution a “remarkable debut.”

The TargetThe Target by Baldacci. Baldacci is, for me at least, the quintessence of “dessert” reading. You can’t survive on it alone, but it sure tastes good in moderation. The Target is Baldacci’s most recent publication and thankfully it comes in his Will Robie series, arguably my favorite character in his voluminous corpus. Robie teams up with Jessica Reel, they are becoming quite a formidable pair, for a dangerous mission sanctioned by POTUS in North Korea. Baldacci weaves this mission together with another storyline involving an old enemy of Reel, which I found more compelling than the North Korea business. While the two narratives coincide, the book’s pace is rapid. Once Reel’s old enemy disappears the book feels as though it coasts to the end. I’ve consumed much Baldacci dessert this spring and the tastiness of this dessert is become stale. Time to move on for a while.

Click here to find other entries in the Recent Reads series.

People come to me for one thing . . . I preach to them a Calvinist creed and a Puritan morality. That is what they want and that is what they get. If they want anything else they must go elsewhere. – Spurgeon

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How to Encourage Your Pastor

How to Encourage Your Pastor

What is the most powerful, yet least talked about, way every church member can encourage his or her pastor?

Faithful attendance at the church’s gathered worship.

Your consistent commitment to the corporate gathering reveals many different things:

  • Your obedience to Hebrews 10:25
  • An expectation to meet with God through worship with the body of Christ
  • A hunger to hear from God through the preaching of His word
  • A hopeful lifting of your gaze off the world and on to Christ
  • A delight in fellowship with other brothers and sisters in Christ
  • A cherishing of the ordinary means of grace
  • A prioritization of the things of God over the things of men
  • A treasuring of the primary way God shapes His people into Christlikeness

And all of these things encourage your pastor to faithfulness in his ministry of the word and prayer! It gives him excitement when he prepares a sermon, fervor in his prayer, joy in his shepherding, and longevity in the ministry. And the inverse is true, inconsistent attendance at gathered worship tempts pastors to despair and steals joy from shepherding.

In What is a Healthy Church Member? Thabiti Anyabwile makes a similar point,

Few things are more discouraging or dishonoring to [faithful preachers] than a congregation inattentive to the Word of God. Faithful pastors flourish at the fertile reception of the preached word. They’re made all the more bold when their people give ear to the Lord’s voice and give evidence of being shaped by it. As church members, we can care for our pastors and teachers and help prevent unnecessary discouragement and fatigue by cultivating the habit of expositional listening.

How then, dear church member, are you doing in this area? Is your pattern of attendance one that discourages or encourages your pastor? For the health of your soul and your soul, let it be the latter.

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Preaching for Conversion

Spurgeon Preaching Tips

He is known as “The Prince of Preachers,” but “The Soul-Winner” would be just as apt a title for Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Nothing gave him greater joy than seeing a sinner come to Christ.

One of his greatest lectures is titled “On Conversion as Our Aim.” He says, “Our great object of glorifying God is . . . mainly achieved by the winning of souls. We must see souls born unto God.” From there Spurgeon goes on to provide various actions necessary to bring souls to Christ.

Lest any Calvinist bristle at his emphasis on human means, Spurgeon says from the outset, “Since conversion is a divine work, we must take care that we depend entirely upon the Spirit of God, and look to Him for power over men’s minds.” The Spirit is sovereign over salvation and thus we must long for his unction and movement in our preaching.

One final exhortation in the lecture is worth our concentration. The Prince calls his students to consider how tone, temper, and spirit in preaching are essential elements of “soul-winning preaching.”

LET THEM SEE, HEAR, AND FEEL YOUR GOSPEL

“If you preach the truth in a dull, monotonous style, God may bless it, but in all probability he will not; at any rate the tendency of such a style is not to promote attention, but to hinder it. It is not often that sinners are awakened by ministers who are themselves asleep. A hard, unfeeling mode of speech is also to be avoided; want of tenderness is a sad lack, and repels rather than attracts,” Spurgeon exhorts.

His belief in God’s sovereign work through the ordinary means created great confidence in the work of preaching, “Happy shall we be if we preach believingly, always expecting the Lord to bless his own word. This will give us a quiet confidence which will forbid petulance, rashness, and weariness. . . . “Mean conversions, expect them, and prepare for them. Resolve that your hearers shall either yield to your Lord or be without excuse, and that this shall be the immediate result of the sermon now in hand.”

He also understood the appropriate balance between gravity and humor, saying, “Preach very solemnly, for it is a weighty business, but let your matter be lively and pleasing, for this will prevent solemnity from souring into dreariness. Be so thoroughly solemn that all your faculties are aroused and consecrated, and then a dash of humour will only add intenser gravity to the discourse, even as a flash of lightning makes midnight darkness all the more impressive.”

His final instructions are well worth a block quote. Read them carefully and let them challenge your perspective on preaching,

Impressed with a sense of their danger, give the ungodly no rest in their sins; knock again and again at the door of their hearts, and knock as for life and death. Your solicitude, your earnestness, your anxiety, your travailing in birth for them God will bless to their arousing. God works mightily by this instrumentality. But our agony for souls must be real and not feigned, and therefore our hearts must be wrought into true sympathy with God. Low piety means little spiritual power. Extremely pointed addresses may be delivered by men whose hearts are out of order with the Lord, but their result must be small. There is a something in the very tone of the man who has been with Jesus which has more power to touch the heart than the most perfect oratory: remember this and maintain an unbroken walk with God. You will need much night-work in secret if you are to gather many of your Lord’s lost sheep. Only by prayer and fasting can you gain power to cast out the worst of devils. Let men say what they will about sovereignty, God connects special success with special states of heart, and if these are lacking he will not do many mighty works.

Brothers, let us use all our faculties in the grand aim of soul-winning. May God awaken our hearts to the glory of His sovereign grace, power of His gospel and ordinary means, the plight of sinful men that stand around us, and let us preach with passion and power. We want Spurgeons in our pulpits!

At Gethsemane we come to the Holy of Holies of our Lord’s life on earth. No man can rightly expound such a passage as this; it is a subject for prayerful, heart-broken meditation, more than for human language. – Spurgeon

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18 Tips to Help Your Congregation Sing

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I love 9Marks. Their resources are continually thought provoking and oh so useful, and the latest edition of the 9Marks Journal, “The Church Singing“, is no exception.

The father and son duo of David and Jonathan Leeman offer an article entitled “My Congregation Barely Sings; How Can I Help?” and it is striking in practical wisdom. They write,

If church leaders want congregations that will really “speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” (Eph. 5:19), they will have to work at it. They will have to try things that might seem strange or unnatural for people who are accustomed to sitting quietly and watching the performance on stage. Here are a few tips, many of which, no doubt, fall into the realm of prudence.

But they don’t actually provide just a few tips, they provide 18 of them! All 18 are sound, but here are two of my favorites:

Choose “congregational” rather than “performance” songs. Here is a general (not absolute) principle: the more a song depends on the musical accompaniment and cannot be sung by a couple of children in the car on the way home, the more performance-oriented and less congregational it probably is. Congregational songs tend to have singable and memorable melodies. Just because a Christian artist has created something wonderful does not mean it is appropriate for the congregation. The melody may not be very melodic. It may be too high, too low, or wide of range. It may be too rhythmic, perhaps syncopated in a way that’s difficult for untrained singers. It may be too complex through bridges, tags, or multiple keys. Such music might sound wonderful with the recorded accompaniment. Maybe the praise band can perform it just fine. But the more a congregation needs the musicians up front to get through a song, the more you can expect them to mouth the words while watching the band do its thing.

Regularly remind the congregation that they are the primary instrument in corporate worship. If they don’t sing with gusto, musical worship won’t happen. That doesn’t mean acting like a cheerleader at a pep-rally: “Okay, let’s really sing…I want to hear you…I know you can sing louder!” Such leadership detracts from the seriousness of the music, and doesn’t treat their singing as a genuine spiritual expression of love, thanksgiving, and praise. Ultimately, congregational singing should be as natural as words of awe before an unusual sunset, or words of mourning with a hurting friend. Still, congregations must be taught that it is their responsibility to sing, and to teach one another through song. They must be taught to gather expecting to sing.

Head on over to the 9Marks site and read all 18 for yourself.

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What Is Expositional Preaching?

9781433543135mDavid Helm begins his fabulous little book Expositional Preaching with a portrait of the great Charles Simeon.

Helm says Simeon’s preaching “had something that much of our preaching lacks.” What might that be? “Simeon believed,” Helm writes, “that a simple and clear explication of the Bible is what makes a church healthy and happy. Biblical exposition does the heavy lifting of building a church.”

Simeon once said,

My endeavor is to bring out of Scripture what is there, and not to thrust in what I think might be there. I have a great jealousy on this head; never to speak more or less than I believe to be the mind of the Spirit in the passage I am expounding.

And this is exactly what is lacking in so much of the popular preaching today. Helm says we need preaching “committed to staying on the line, never rising above the text of Scripture to say more than it said and never falling beneath the text by lessening its force and fullness.”

WHAT EXPOSITION REALLY IS

Many of us experientially know how spot on Helm is. We have sat through preaching that claimed to be expositional, but was far from the true ideal. Sure, the preacher was sequentially walking through a book of the Bible, but lectio continua does not make one an expositor. It is oh so easy to take a text and pull out from it something that isn’t there. Maybe it is the classic “right doctrine from the wrong text,” or it is increasingly likely that a preacher using the text a launching pad for personal musings on just about everything.

One thing that will protect us against unintended imposition on the text is a clear, and right, understanding of what expositional preaching really is. David Helm’s definition is as good as I’ve come across. He says,

Expositional preaching is empowered preaching that rightly submits the shape and emphasis of the sermon to the shape and emphasis of the biblical text.

The strength of his definition, for me at least, is his employment of “shape and emphasis.” If the sermon gets this right then you can bet it brings out of the text what the Holy Spirit put there, not what the preacher thinks is there.

WHAT EXPOSITION SOUNDS LIKE

Paying attention to shape and emphasis bears significantly on structure and delivery. For example, I recently preached a sermon on Mark 14:12-31 where the author employs one of his favorite literary sandwiches. Three sections in the text meant three divisions in the sermon. I could have easily come up with five divisions, but at that point my sermon is not as clearly reflecting the shape of the text. Furthermore, this Markan sandwich exists to emphasize the self-sacrifice of Christ that is announced in the Lord’s Supper. So, my attempt to mirror the text’s emphasis meant devoting most of my explanation and application to 14:22-25.

Now, we ought to mention how much tone comes into play in this understanding of exposition. If comforting promises fill the text, our tone ought to have distinct warmth and sympathy. If threatenings or judgments are emphasized, our voice must have prophetic courage. This kind of attention to emphasis protects the preacher from becoming a one-chord band. Ican point you to many a preacher who are like Creed or Nickleback; no matter the content the song always sounds the same.

STIR ‘EM UP

Decades after his ordination Charles Simeon reflected on his early preaching ministry by saying,

I undertook the care of [of a friend’s church] and I have reason to hope that some good was done there. In the space of a month or six weeks the church became quite crowded; the Lord’s Table was attended by three times the usual number of communicants, and a considerable stir was made among the dry bones. (quoted in Helm, 111).

Work hard this week in your preparation to feed God’s sheep. Labor to rightly submit the shape and emphasis of your sermon to the shape and emphasis of the text. Then go and make a considerable stir among the dry bones.

No man can do me a truer kindness in this world than to pray for me. – Spurgeon

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3 Truths About the Lord’s Supper

LordsSupper

In Mark 14:22-25 Jesus gathers with his disciples to eat the Passover meal just hours before the pawns of darkness convey a criminal court to silence Jesus.

In God’s great providence, the silence of the cross became the means by which God’s salvation would be shouted to the ends of the earth. God loves to use small whispers to shout His glory and what we get to look at tonight is that most blessed of whispers, the Lord’s Supper.

What was formerly a celebration of Israel’s redemption from slavery in Egypt will become a remembrance and celebration of Jesus’ new-exodus deliverance of his people from the power of sin and Satan. And it’s in that transformation we see this truth: The Lord’s Supper shouts forth the grace of our Lord’s sacrifice.

3 ASPECTS OF THE SUPPER’S ANNOUNCEMENT

When traditional food of the Passover meal was brought in – unleavened bread, bitter herbs, fruit, greens, and stewed lamb – was brought in the youngest person would ask the traditional question, “Why do we eat these foods on this night?” In reply the father would recount the story of God’s grace in the Exodus. After singing Psalms 113-115 and just before the meal itself, the plate of unleavened bread was lifted up, a prayer of thanks was said, and then the bread was distributed.

This bread was normally eaten in silence, but notice how Jesus interrupts the tradition in 14:22 and says, “Take; this is my body.” First, we see that the Lord’s Supper is a gospel announcement. He is saying, “I am the Passover bread,” feed upon me and live! Roman Catholics have historically believed that in the Lord’s Supper Christ is literally re-sacrificed for sin, but that misses the point of the text. Jesus is saying that when we take the bread, we hold in our hands not a literal sacrifice, but a symbol of His body that was sacrificed on our behalf.

In 14:23 He takes a cup, gives thanks, and then hands it to the disciples and look at what Jesus says in 14:24, “This is my blood of the covenant.” Second, the Lord’s Supper is a covenantal announcement. That phrase “blood of the covenant” would have been engrained in the brain of every Jew. It comes from Exodus 24 where Moses instituted the first covenant by throwing blood upon the people. Luke 22:20 records Jesus saying that this cup “is the new covenant in my blood.” The New Covenant prophesied in Jeremiah 31, where God promised to write His law upon His peoples’ heart, to open their eyes in the knowledge of Him, and forgive all their sins, and Jesus says this covenant is about to dawn through His death. Just as God ratified the Old Covenant through a meal with His people in Exodus 24, He ratifies the New Covenant through a meal. The covenant is realized and sealed by Christ’s blood, which 14:24 says, “is poured out for many.”

If you’ve read the entire Bible you’ve likely noticed how blood runs over almost every page. Our faith is a blood-bought and blood-wrought faith. Those who escaped Egypt in the first Exodus only did so if the blood of a lamb was smeared over their door. Throughout the Old Testament blood literally flowed out of the Temple as animals were sacrificed to pay the penalty for the sin. Jesus tells us He is the fulfillment of all the blood-sacrifice shadows of old; His blood was about to be shed once and for all to pay for sin and deliver His people in the new-exodus. The gracious blood is symbolized in the cup of the Lord’s Supper.

Maybe you are reading this and are not a Christian, you need this blood of Christ to cover your sin. It’s only through faith in this blood that your sins, which are now leading you to eternal death and judgment before a righteous God, can be washed away. His blood was spilled on the cross so sinners like you and me might be restored to relationship with God. Will you trust in His blood today? The old hymn has it right:

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

Finally, the Lord’s Supper is an eschatological announcement. Yes, I know that’s a big word, but oh how good it is! Look at what Jesus says in 14:25, “Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” The cup announces that a time is coming when Christ will finally establish His eternal kingdom and feast forever with His bride, the church. This is why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11 that when we take the Lord’s Supper we proclaim His death until He comes back. So in the Lord’s Supper is satisfyingly unsatisfying. These are just tastes, spiritual rations of the feast we wait for and long for.

COME AND FEAST!

I recently watched the movie Gravity, which is almost entirely about one astronaut suspended in space and trying to make it back to earth safely before time runs out and she dies. The movie’s plotline was sufficiently tense, but what really captured my attention was the stunning pictures and sights of our planet just hanging there in outer space. Maybe you are like me and such sights stir your soul in fresh ways to appreciate the grandeur of God’s creation. And stir it did, for about eighteen hours. At some point the next day the toils of life were quenching out that fresh wonder at God’s power.

Isn’t our awe at the majesty of Christ displayed on the cross much like this? There are periodic times where we get a fresh glimpse of His powerful love, but so often the cares of life quench out the amazement. But oh how kind our God is! He knows our weakness and gives us the means of grace to continually refill our souls with astonishment at His glory. The Lord’s Supper is one such means. It is a visible sermon, one that preaches the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. This is why we take it every single week, because we need to be reminded of the gospel, Christ’s covenant with sinners, and the news that He is coming back.

What a meal this is! Do you see its wonder and importance? Do you plan your week in such a way to make sure you can come to this Table? Families who love each other are families who regularly eat together. Do you feel a sense of loss when you are not with the gathered church in this act of worship? It ought not to be possible for Christian to miss the corporate worship of God and not miss the corporate worship of God. Can we be honest and acknowledge that we often have a small view of this Supper’s power? That we so often delight more in the trivialities of this world and so will forgo a meal with Christ. I have prayed this week that God would elevate our love of Christ and longing for Christ to such a degree that we move heaven and earth to commune with Christ through the word, prayer, and Supper each Saturday night.

– This post is adapted from my recent sermon, “The Savior’s Passover“, on Mark 14:12-31.

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Recent Reads

I love to read. By God’s grace I am a pretty fast reader; I usually read a couple books each week. I find it helpful to summarize my thoughts on each book and I offer those thoughts in the hope that you will be encouraged to either read or pass over the given title. 

9781433531316mGod in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-Love of God Reorients Our World by David Wells. What a book. After years of constructive deconstruction of modern evangelicalism in the west Wells charts a path forward for faithfulness. Wells convincingly argues that what churches must rediscover is an understanding of God’s “holy-love” (the hyphen is very important). The book’s final paragraph sums it all up quite brilliantly:

Today, we need a fresh vision of God and his character of holy-love. Our understanding of his greatness gets worn down, sometimes worn out, by the constant rubbing against our highly modernized life. It is this vision, though, this knowing of God, that puts steel into spines and fire into Christian hearts. When we are God-centered in our thoughts, God-fearing in our hearts, when we see with clarity what his character of holy-love is like, he begins to have weight in our lives. When that happens we become, not just occasional visitors to the eternal, but its permanent residents, its citizens. And that is when the church becomes more than just another organization but, in fact, the outpost of eternity in this wounded world. May the church indeed be all that it is in Christ, so that through its life the glory of God will be seen anew in all its splendor! (242)

Amen.

9781433539565mCalvin on the Christian Life: Glorifying God and Enjoying Him Forever by Michael Horton. The latest entry into Crossway’s “Theologians on the Christian Life” is a marvelous introduction to the Genevan reformer. What Mark Beach did for the Institutes Horton does for all of Calvin’s corpus. Horton wisely devotes careful attention to Calvin’s doctrine, for the Geneva reformer had not place for a dichotomy between doctrine and life. I do think that Horton’s Escondido emphases come through in his discussions on justification, union with Christ, and two kingdoms. Reader will notice a conspicuous rise of Luther footnotes in these sections. Nevertheless, if you are looking for an imminently readable and practical introduction to Reformed faith and practice, this is great place to start.

1914Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War by Max Hastings. With this year being the centenary of World War I’s outbreak, I have purposed to read several works on The Great War. Fascination with The War to End All Wars is not nearly as pronounced in our country as it is over in Europe and my historical reading has reflected such a reality. I have read dozens of books on World War II, but – as best I can tell – have only read two on the preceding catastrophe. And that is an apt title for Hastings most recent volume. The acclaimed Hasting hand on history is visible for all to see: penetrating analysis, moving personal accounts, and thoughtful questioning of the status quo. I do think, however, like many of Sir Max’s other books, this book has a penchant for so filling the narrative with personal recollections that the overall flow becomes disjointed. This may prove to be one the best publications in year filled with offerings on World War I.

Click here to find other entries in the Recent Reads series.