Is Gospel-Centeredness a Fad?

What do you think? My answer, here.

Spurgeon Sabbatical 09

From June 22-July1 I have the uber privilege of being part of the Spurgeon Sabbatical. Here’s what I shared with my uber-supportive church as I get ready to live in Exile (aka Massachusetts) for wee bit.

Hello Church,

One of the things of love most about WBC is the passion and commitment to be generous towards the Kingdom of God, all around the world, locally and globally. Not just when it’s convenient but whenever God calls and enables us to.

Well, I want to thank you ahead of time for being generous to God’s people, specifically a group of pastors  that I will be serving at the Spurgeon Sabbatical, June 22-July 1. Your generosity in sending me to serve these pastors who come from all over the States and even around the world has been recieved with thankfulness by them in the past and I know will once again this year. They realize that it is a loving sacrifice for your pastor to serve you  “from a distance,” catching up with emails and phone calls in the afternoon and coming back just for the weekend.

This will be my 3rd time leading the gathered worship aspects of the Sabbatical–each day will begin and end with a time worshipping God together in song, Scripture reading and prayer. These times are meant to bookend our rigorous study and lively fellowship. This year’s topic is “Romans 1-5 Judgment and Justification: Keeping the Main Thing in Ministry, the Main Thing.” Our two texts will be Simon Gathercole’s Where is Boasting: Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul’s Response in Romans 1-5 and Mark Noll’s edited Where Shall My Wond’ring Soul Begin?  The Landscape of Evangelical Piety and Thought.

My time at the Spurgeon Sabbatical is more like a short-term mission trip than a vacation or simply attending or even leading a conference.  It will be exhausting. I will be away from my family. The days will be long. There will be intense soul-surgery. So…I humbly ask you to pray:

• Pray that God would encourage Heidi in my absence.
• Pray that I would serve with the strength that God supplies.
• Pray that God would free me from the tempation of self-importance.
• Pray that the 15 pastors would be personally renewed in their faith by our study of the gospel in Romans.
• Pray that these men would return with their eyes fixed firmly on the Lord Jesus Christ as their only hope and goal for their families and ministries.

Honest About Sin, Hopeful About Forgiveness

I haven’t been blogging much. I’m gearing up for vacation next week and am hoping that a restful week by the lake might reinvigorate my writing.

For now, here are some gospel-musings that I recently shared with my church family.

The gospel frees us to be both brutally honest about our sin and abundantly hopeful about our forgiveness in Jesus Christ.  When we come face to face with the gospel there is no room for denial and there is no room for despair. This prayer from The Valley of Vision fed my soul richly yesterday, and I hope that God might use it to preach the gospel to your soul today.

All things in heaven, earth, around, within and without condemn me—

the sun which sees my misdeeds,

the darkness which is light to You,

the cruel accuser who justly charges me,

the good angels who have been provoked to leave me,

Your countenance which scans my secrete sins,

Your righteous law, Your holy Word,

my sin-soiled conscience, my private and public life,

my neighbors, myself—

all write dark things against me.

I do not deny them, do not excuse them, but confess,

“Father, I have sinned.”

Yet still I live, and fly repenting to Your outstretched arms;

You will not cast me off, for Jesus brings me near,

You will not condemn me, for He died in my place,

You will not mark my mountains of sin, for He leveled all,

And his beauty covers my deformities.

O my God, I bid farewell to sin by clinging to His cross,

Hiding in his wounds, and sheltering in His side.

–adapted from “Divine Mercies” from the Valley of Vision, p. 17

The Bible is not about you, it’s about Jesus

This is one of my favorite quotes by Tim Keller. In Edmond Clowney-esque fashion, Keller shows how every story of Scripture foreshadows or anticipates Jesus. Seeing Christ in all of Scripture is not merely about typology; it’s about rightly seeing how every story in Scripture fits into the larger context of the whole Story of Redemption and how that whole Story is either pointing forward to Jesus or reflecting backward to him (and then forward again to his return!)

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [Jesus] interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” Luke 24:27

• Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is imputed to us (1 Corinthians 15).

• Jesus is the true and better Abel who, though innocently slain, has blood now that cries out for our acquittal, not our condemnation (Hebrews 12:24).
• Jesus is the true and better Abraham who answered the call of God to leave all the comfortable and familiar and go out into the void “not knowing wither he went!” to create a new people of God.
• Jesus is the true and better Isaac who was not just offered up by his father on the mount but was truly sacrificed for us. While God said to Abraham, “Now I know you love me because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love, from me,” now we can say to God, “Now we know that you love me, because you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you love, from me.”
• Jesus is the true and better Jacob who wrestled and took the blow of justice we deserved, so we, like Jacob, only receive the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us.
• Jesus is the true and better Joseph who, at the right hand of the king, forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his new power to save them.
• Jesus is the true and better Moses who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant (Hebrews 3).
• Jesus is the true and better Rock of Moses who, struck with the rod of God’s justice, now gives us water in the desert.
• Jesus is the true and better Job, the truly innocent sufferer, who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends (Job 42).
• Jesus is the true and better David, whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves.
• Jesus is the true and better Esther who didn’t just risk losing an earthly palace but lost the ultimate and heavenly one, who didn’t just risk his life, but gave his life to save his people.
• Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast out into the storm so that we could be brought in.
• Jesus is the real Rock of Moses, the real Passover Lamb – innocent, perfect, helpless, slain so the angel of death will pass over us. He is the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice, the Lamb, the Light, the Bread.

The Bible is not about you — it is about him.

Tim Keller, “Preaching to the Heart”

How Will You Preach the Gospel in THIS Kind of world?

Bob Dylan didn’t have a clue how right he was when he croaked…“The times they are a-changin’.” The world we live in is morphing at a staggering rate. But. There is one thing that will never change–the gospel. And we are to be ready in season and out of season (1 Timothy4:2) to announce life’s only essential message. Take a second to get connected with the reality of our hyper-changing world and ask God for wisdom to faithfully proclaim his un-changing goodnews.

The Cure for “I’m too busy!”

C.J. Mahaney’s 17 posts on “Biblical Productivity” are now available in a handy-dandy 36 page PDF, here. If you find yourself ever thinking “I’m just too busy!” then this article is for you.  These posts have tons of good time-management ideas and much more. You’ll be challenged and equipped to determine your God-given roles in life so that you can then identity key, theologically-driven goals that will shape your yearly, monthly, weekly and daily schedule.

Since God is the only one who ever gets his “To-Do” list done every day, we should listen to what he says! And C.J. provides a good summary of God’s timely-wisdom.

For those of you who’d prefer to read online…here are all the posts.

Biblical Productivity

1. Are You Busy?

2. Confessions of a Busy Procrastinator

3. The Procrastinator Within

4. Just Do It

5. In All Thy Ways

6. The Sluggard

7. Time. Redeemed.

8. Roles, Goals, Scheduling

9. Roles (Part 1)

10. Roles (Part 2)

11. Goals (Part 1)

12. Goals (Part 2)

13. Goals (Part 3)

14. Goals (Part 4)

15. Scheduling the Unexpected

16. The To-Do Lists Are Never Done

17. Self-Sufficient

Antoine Dufour “Trilogie”

Andy McKee and Antoine Dufour are two of my favorite guitarists. McKee is  a bit famous-er, but I am equally amazed and delighted by Dufour’s music.  Listen to the whole piece–stunningly beautiful!

Things I Never Want to Do Now that I’m 30

Apparently turning 30 is supposed to be a massive event in one’s life. I’m not so sure. But it is a blessing! And every birthday one should take some time to reflect on the gift of life God has given you. And with just a little bit of reflection, there’s a few things I should never do now that I’m 30. I should never eat a plate of loaded nachos at 10PM again. I should never wear a speedo–ever. I should never assume that because I play guitar I’m automatically a rock star on Guitar Hero. I should never attempt a comb-over.

But most importantly, I should never live as though I do not need the gospel, as though I could possibly move on to something bigger and better. The one thing that I enter my thirties with that I didn’t have for most of my twenties is this all-of-life-pervading reality– I am far more sinful and rebellious and messed up than I ever imagined, but because of Christ Jesus I’m also far more loved and accepted and empowered than I ever dared to dream!

So on my 30th birthday, after a wonderful morning with my wife and son and some tasty blueberry pancakes, I went back to one of my favorite entries in one of my favorite books to reflect on what really matters and few things I never want to do.

“The ‘Nevers’ of the Gospel”

O Lord, may I never fail to come to the knowledge of the truth,
never rest in a system of doctrine, however scriptural,
that does not bring or further salvation,
or teach me to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts,
or help me to live soberly, righteously, godly;

[May I] never rely on my own convictions and resolutions,
but be strong in you and in your might;
never cease to find your grace sufficient
in all my duties, trials, and conflicts;
never forget to repair to you
in all my spiritual distresses and outward troubles,
in all the dissatisfactions experienced in creature comforts;
never fail to retreat to him who is full of grace and truth,
the friend that loves at all times,
who is touched with feelings of my infirmities,
and can do exceeding abundantly for me;

[May I] never confine my religion to extraordinary occasion,
but acknowledge you in all my ways;
never limit my devotions to particular season
but fear you all the day long;
never be godly only on the sabbath or in your house,
but on every day abroad and at home;
never make piety a dress but a habit,
not only a habit but a nature,
not only a nature but a life.

Do good to me by all your dispensations,
by all means of grace,
by worship, prayers, praises,
And at last let me enter that world where is no temple,
but only your glory and the Lamb’s.

–From The Valley of Vision, “The ‘Nevers’ of the Gospel”, p. 64.

HT: BK

New Tolkien Book Arriving May 2009

Like the Children of Hurin I have high hopes for Tolkien’s new book, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún. But my expectations are quite different since The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún is not the latest installment of Tolkien’s ‘forgotten stories’ of Middle Earth. Rather it is Tolkien’s retelling of the Norse sagas, that over 70 years ago, inspired Tolkien to sub-create his own mythology for England.

The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún is a previously unpublished work by J.R.R. Tolkien, written while Tolkien was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford during the 1920s and ‘30s, before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It makes available for the first time Tolkien’s extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the Völsung and The Fall of the Niflungs. It includes an introduction by J.R.R. Tolkien, drawn from one of his own lectures on Norse literature, with commentary and notes on the poems by Christopher Tolkien. (From the Publishers)

Read the Forward by Christopher Tolkien at The Tolkien Library.

To better understand and appreciate Tolkien’s literary genius check out Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle Earth: How Tolkien created a New Mythology.

He Who Does Not Read Books Proves He Has No Brain at All!

If ever there were an unassailable defense for building a library of great books (and READING them!), this is it. Listen to my hero, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, explain the great need for reading sound works of theology as he preaches about 2 Timothy 4:13 and Paul’s request for Timothy to bring his books.

We do not know what the books were about, and we can only form some guess as to what the parchments were. Paul had a few books which were left, perhaps wrapped up in the cloak, and Timothy was to be careful to bring them. Even an apostle must read. . . . A man who comes up into the pulpit, professes to take his text on the spot, and talks any quantity of nonsense, is the idol of many. If he will speak without premeditation, or pretend to do so, and never produce what they call a dish of dead men’s brains—oh! that is the preacher. How rebuked are they by the apostle!

He is inspired, and yet he wants books!

He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books!

He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books!

He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books!

He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things which it was unlawful for a men to utter, yet he wants books!

He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books!

The apostle says to Timothy and so he says to every preacher, “Give thyself unto reading.” The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own.

Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible. We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master’s service. Paul cries, “Bring the books”—join in the cry.

HT: JT