Songs of Redemption Project

I’m super pumped to announce that I’ll be in the studio this week recording a  6 song EP. The songs include…

• “There is a Fountain” (William Cowper)
• “He is Risen!” (Eric Schumacher)
• “Come Lord Jesus to Redeem Us” (Gary Parrett)
• “Upon this Mount (Isaiah 25:6-9) (Gary Parrett)
• “Look Ye Saints the Sight is Glorious”(Thomas Kelly)
• “Christ is Coming! Let Creation” (John R. MacDuff)

Each of these songs build the theme of Redemption from Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension to our waiting for his return and our celebration of his return. This is an exciting project not only for me but also for our music team, our church and Jesus’ Church everywhere because the end result will be more Truth-saturated music in the ears, hearts and minds of many!

What is Satan’s Strategy?

It is Satan’s great effort to keep you from Jesus. By holding up to your view a false picture of His character, from which everything loving, winning, inviting, and attractive is excluded, by suggesting wrong views of His work, in which everything gloomy, contracted, and repulsive is foisted upon the mind; by assailing the atonement, questioning the compassion, and limiting the grace of Christ, he would persuade you that in that heart which bled on Calvary there is no room for you, and that upon that work which received the Father’s seal there is not breadth sufficient for you to stand. All his endeavors are directed, and all his assaults are shaped, with a view to keep your soul back from Christ. It is thus he seeks to vent his wrath upon the Savior, and his malignity upon you.
–Octavius Winslow, Morning Thoughts, August 18

A Book I Want to Read

My buddy, Bob, is reviewing a book that I can’t wait to get into–Jared Wilson’s Your Jesus is Too Safe.

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”

Good Friday–The Great Eucatastrophe

I had the privilege of preaching at Atmosphere Church’s Good Friday service last week. What an amazing time of gathered worship. Together we gazed into the sovereign irony surrounding the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus. The music, the teaching, the prayer, the celebration of the Table caused me to see and savor my bleeding, dying Lord even more.

Together we explored the ironies of the Cross through the lens of Eucatastrophe.

What is Good Friday? Good Friday is an oxymoron, a day of irony, of painful paradoxes. Irony makes us… laugh and think more clearly. Irony makes us see familiar things with fresh eyes.

But Good Friday is not just a day of ordinary irony. It is THE day of the THE Ultimate Irony. It is the most catastrophic day in all of history! But it’s a good catastrophe. It is a Eucatastrophe, the Great Eucatastrophe. The execution of Jesus on that Roman Cross on that Friday afternoon nearly two thousand years ago was the greatest, most complete, the ultimate Eucatastrophe ever and that will ever be.

J.R.R. Tolkien coined this phrase to explain how good things can come from catastrophes, how unpredictable redemption can be won in the midst of unimaginable loss. But Tolkien’s standard was not fiction or fantasy like his Lord of the Rings. He believed all of the happy endings in all of our fairy tales were but faint echoes of the real gospel of the real good news. Speaking of the story of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, Tolkien said: “There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true…But this story is supreme; and it is true.”

Tonight we stare into the day of irony, the day of Eucatastrophe, this Good Friday. With God’s help let us stare into the good catastrophe of the cross with fresh eyes.

• First we will see how Good Friday is a Eucatastrophe for Jesus.
• And then we will see how Jesus’ Eucatastrophe is good news for us.

(Click here for the whole sermon: “Good Friday–the Great Eucatastrophe”)

“Good Friday” is a Eucatastrophe

From The Valley of Vision (pp. 76-77),

Christ was all anguish
that I might be all joy,

cast off
that I might be brought in,

trodden down as an enemy
that I might be welcomed as a friend,

surrendered to hell’s worst
that I might attain heaven’s best,

stripped
that I might be clothed,

wounded
that I might be healed,

athirst
that I might drink,

tormented
that I might be comforted,

made a shame
that I might inherit glory,

entered darkness
that I might have eternal light.

My Saviour wept
that all tears might be wiped from my eyes,

groaned
that I might have endless song,

endured all pain
that I might have unfading health,

bore a thorny crown
that I might have a glory-diadem,

bowed his head
that I might uplift mine,

experienced reproach
that I might receive welcome,

closed his eyes in death
that I might gaze on unclouded brightness,

expired
that I might for ever live.

O Father, who spared not thine only Son that thou mightest spare me,
All this transfer thy love designed and accomplished;
Help me to adore thee by lips and life.
O that my every breath might be ecstatic praise, my every step buoyant with delight. . .

HT Justin Taylor

Does Jesus offer more than a moral makeover?

Today’s quote from Of First Importance offers probing questions on how we view Jesus and the Bible.

“Does Christ come merely to improve our existence in Adam or to end it, sweeping us into his new creation? Is Christianity all about spiritual and moral makeovers or about death and resurrection — radical judgment and radical grace? Is the Word of God a resource for what we have already decided we want and need, or is it God’s living and active criticism of our religion, morality, and pious experience? In other words, is the Bible God’s story, centering on Christ’s redeeming work, that rewrites our stories, or is it something we use to make our stories a little more exciting and interesting?”

- Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Books, 2008), 24.

Zechariah Loves to Sing

Here.

Fight Club = biblical accountability

No other book outside the Bible has taught me how to fight sin than John Owen’s On the Mortification of Sin In Believers (found in a recent compilation Overcoming Sin and Temption).  As I trekked through the 17th century English I discovered theological vistas I had never seen before, and hardly seen in any contemporary books on fighting sin. (And anything worthwhile almost always ends up quoting Owen anyways!) Owen helped show me how deadly and decieving sin is…and how life-renewing and joy-giving God is! I highly recommend him.

But, no other writing outside of the Bible and Owen has showed me what fighting sin looks like in a theologically rich and uber-practical way than my friend Jonathan Dodson’s. Jonathan has done an amazing service for the church. He  distills Owen’s On the Mortification of Sin (and yes…years of Pastor John Piper’s teaching, too!) and then delivers it in a strategy aimed to keep Christian accountability, biblical.  Rather than drifting off into legalism or unhelpful “confessional booths”.

Here’s my point. If you want victory over sin and deeper joy in God, read Dodson’s article “Fight Club.” Better yet–read Dodson’s article and start your own “Fight Club”.

Here’s an excerpt…