The Company of Job, Part 2 October 11, 2007
Posted by theshadow in : Uncategorized , add a commentOur preview on September 30th went well. It was literally standing room only at Lakemont Presbyterian. I was tapped to do narration, sing backup, and even to sing a short part in one of the group songs (yes, we are short of singers); and, thank God, I managed to pull it off, in spite of being laid up with a cold and not having a voice for a week. It probably took another two days to get over the strain I put on my voice that evening. Thankfully, I am almost completely over it now.
The next preview for The Company of Job will be on November 3rd, at Heritage Academy in Augusta, GA.
The Company of Job September 7, 2007
Posted by theshadow in : Uncategorized , 2commentsI am currently serving as a member of the Board of Directors for The Company of Job, a nonprofits arts organization in August, Georgia. We are producing Job: A Postmodern Opera of Biblical Proportions, a retelling of the story of Job, featuring all original music written and composed by Don and Suzanne Harris, and Henry Johnson of Augusta. Our next preview is Sunday, September 30th, at 6 pm, at Lakemont Presbyterian Church, 1000 Bluebird Road, in Augusta. I am very proud of the commercial we had made for the local radio stations. The voice on the spot is Wayne Thompson, one of the nation’s premier voiceover artists, who donated his talents to the cause.
Union With Christ #5 August 23, 2007
Posted by theshadow in : Union With Christ , add a commentQuestion 64: What is the invisible church?
Answer: The invisible church is the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one under Christ the head.
Question 65: What special benefits do the members of the invisible church enjoy by Christ?
Answer: The members of the invisible church by Christ enjoy union and communion with him in grace and glory.
Question 66: What is that union which the elect have with Christ?
Answer: The union which the elect have with Christ is the work of God’s grace, whereby they are spiritually and mystically, yet really and inseparably, joined to Christ as their head and husband; which is done in their effectual calling.
Question 67: What is effectual calling?
Answer: Effectual calling is the work of God’s almighty power and grace, whereby (out of his free and special love to his elect, and from nothing in them moving him thereunto) he does, in his accepted time, invite and draw them to Jesus Christ, by his Word and Spirit; savingly enlightening their minds, renewing and powerfully determining their wills, so as they (although in themselves dead in sin) are hereby made willing and able freely to answer his call, and to accept and embrace the grace offered and conveyed therein.
Question 68: Are the elect only effectually called?
Answer: All the elect, and they only, are effectually called; although others may be, and often are, outwardly called by the ministry of the Word, and have some common operations of the Spirit; who, for their wilful neglect and contempt of the grace offered to them, being justly left in their unbelief, do never truly come to Jesus Christ.
Question 69: What is the communion in grace which the members of the invisible church have with Christ?
Answer: The communion in grace which the members of the invisible church have with Christ, is their partaking of the virtue of his mediation, in their justification, adoption, sanctification, and: Whatever else, in this life, manifests their union with him.
Question 70: What is justification?
Answer: Justification is an act of God’s free grace unto sinners, in which he pardons all their sins, accepts and accounts their persons righteous in his sight; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but only for the perfect obedience and full satisfaction of Christ, by God imputed to them, and received by faith alone.
Question 71: How is justification an act of God’s free grace?
Answer: Although Christ, by his obedience and death, did make a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice in the behalf of them that are justified; yet inasmuch as God accepts the satisfaction from a surety, which he might have demanded of them, and did provide this surety, his own only Son, imputing his righteousness to them, and requiring nothing of them for their justification but faith, which also is his gift, their justification is to them of free grace.
— Westminster Larger Catechism
Why Study Theology From a Bunch of Dead Guys, Part 4 August 12, 2007
Posted by theshadow in : Church History , add a commentWe will now look at Judges 2, and read verse 7-15:
So the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord which He had done for Israel. Now Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died when he was one hundred and ten years old. And they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnath Heres, in the mountains of Ephraim, on the north side of Mount Gaash. When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel.
Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals; and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the Lord to anger. They forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for calamity, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were greatly distressed.
4. Studying history reminds us that ideas have consequences.
Here we have an example of the consequences of people forgetting about all that God had provided for them in the past, and thinking that all of their accomplishments were the result of their own intellect and ingenuity. After all that God had done, through miracles the like of which we have never seen, they forgot that it was God who had brought them out of Egypt into the promised land, and had delivered all of their enemies into their hands.
To make matters even worse, time after time in the Old Testament, you read about God giving them instructions to tell their children what he had done, and them failing to do so. The question is, why was God so insistent that they pass on this history to their children? We can be sure it wasn’t just so they would have a never-ending supply of bedtime stories; it wasn’t just so they would have a sense of pride in their heritage as Jews. No, the reason was because all of those people who were eyewitnesses to all of those great acts of God during the exodus and the conquering of the land eventually died, and the only way their descendants would remember that they were God’s chosen people on whom He had bestowed special favor was if the fathers passed the stories of God’s provision down to their children through the generations. As we can see, that did not happen and the people turned away from God, and His judgment fell on them.
May I suggest that one of the reasons that the church has grown so cold and indifferent to God now is because we also have failed to pass on the history of God’s provision for His people to our children? Now, don’t get me wrong; I am not suggesting that just knowing history will keep someone from apostasy. Obviously, a love for God’s Word and sound doctrine is of the highest importance. However, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that while a person who has no regard for church history may still have a love for Scripture, I tend to think that it is almost impossible to love sound doctrine without a love for the history of that doctrine. The book of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is nothing new under the sun, and I certainly believe it. The simple fact is that every heresy that is invading the church today is nothing more than one from our history that has been repackaged and updated.
Right now, there is a movement afoot called “Evangelicals and Catholics Together,” where Protestants are being encouraged to refrain from evangelizing Roman Catholics and to see them instead as just fellow Christians who have a few different beliefs and traditions. When you consider how ridiculous such a viewpoint is in the light of historical fact, then you begin to see why I am so insistent that there is a need for us to better understand why Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Bucer, and all of the other great Reformers separated from the Roman Church, and proclaimed it to be an apostate church.
Once, someone asked Ronald Reagan why he had left the Democratic Party earlier in his political career, and in typical Reagan fashion, he answered, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party; the Democratic Party left me.” And that was exactly the position that Luther and the rest of the Reformers found themselves in; they didn’t leave the Roman Church; the Roman Church had left them. Consequently, they had no choice but to proclaim that their loyalty was with the Word of God, as opposed to the idolatrous practices of Rome. Likewise, we also have no choice: as Bible-believing Protestant Christians, we are called to separate from those who would pervert the Word of God.
Let me conclude by applying what we have just studied to what we are going to learn over the next few posts. The book of Daniel tells of a dream that King Nebuchadnezzar had in which a gigantic statue representing all of the great empires in the history of the world, one of which was the Roman Empire, comes crashing down, leveled by the stone that was cut without using human hands. That stone represented the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the City of God. As we study church history, we will see the power of God at work, as we observe the powerful Roman Empire, a bastion of pagan philosophy and practice, brought to its knees by the Gospel.
We will hear story after story of the mercy of God. We will meet people who seemed to be the least likely to be servants of God, yet looking to Christ in faith, and receiving salvation. I can think of one who spent his youth living as if there was no God, living only to satisfy the lusts of the flesh. But God had other ideas; one day at the age of 33, seemingly by chance, this young man picked up the Bible and the first verses he read were Romans 13:13-14, where it says, Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.
On the eve of the following Easter, he, his son, and his best friend were all baptized by Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan. Of course, I am referring to Augustine, a man who would become one of the stalwarts of orthodoxy during an age when heresy was running rampant. We, as Presbyterians, owe a tremendous debt to this man, who, in battling the heretical views on free will by Pelagius, laid the foundations for the system of thought that would become known as Calvinism.
We will hear about how God has always provided for His church; at times when sound doctrine seemed to be getting shoved to the proverbial back burner, He always raised up great thinkers and theologians who were, above all else, committed to Scripture as the only rule of faith and practice. Men who were flawed; men who, at times, did not even live up their own standards of looking only to Scripture for answers concerning theology. However, at the time when they were most needed, they often stood alone in the face of the world and proclaimed the truth, regardless of the consequences.
Finally, we will also see far too many examples of times when people forgot that it was through God’s power, mercy, and provision that the church had become so successful, and pride and apostasy reared their ugly heads. The fact is, the story of the church is not a pretty one. However, as we study its history, one fact of which we will become extremely aware is that God is in control, and His purposes and His plans will not be stopped. Our Lord told Simon Peter that the gates of Hell would not be able to stand against His church; as we study its history, we will encounter, firsthand, the truth of those words.
Why Study Theology From a Bunch of Dead Guys, Part 3 August 12, 2007
Posted by theshadow in : Church History , add a commentNow let’s go to Deuteronomy 6, and read verses 6-12:
“And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. So it shall be, when the Lord your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, houses full of all good things, which you did not fill, hewn-out wells which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, when you have eaten and are full… then beware, lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage”.
3. Studying history reminds us of God’s provision.
In this short passage, God is reminding the children of Israel that everything they have is a gift from Him; He went out of His way to let them know that, within themselves, they had no reason for pride or boasting.
That very same principle applies to each one of us who are members of the Body of Christ. In fact, let me be very blunt here: I believe that we especially, as Reformed Christians and theologians, need to be reminded of this fact. I tend to think that spiritual pride is our greatest downfall; while that may not necessarily be true of you, I know that it is true of me. I say that to my shame, because I am as guilty as anyone.
Very simply, there is no room for boasting in the Body of Christ. Everything we have has been provided for us by God Himself. Every aspect of our salvation is the result of God’s grace and mercy: from the person and work of Jesus Christ, the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, a confession of faith that is second to none, to all of the great theologians of the Reformed heritage; everything we, as Presbyterians, have is the result of God’s gracious provision. And as we study church history, we will find that the times when apostasy was at its worst was when pride was at its peak; on the other hand, it seems that when the Church had nothing to boast of from a worldly perspective, and they were looking to God alone to provide, was when the greatest spiritual strides were being taken.
Why Study Theology From a Bunch of Dead Guys, Part 2 August 12, 2007
Posted by theshadow in : Church History , add a commentThe next passage at which we will look is Isaiah 38; once again, the context is important. King Hezekiah had gotten sick and had been told by Isaiah that his illness was terminal, and that he was going to die. Scripture tells us that Hezekiah then turned his face to the wall, and cried out to God for mercy, and God heard his prayer and extended his life for another 15 years. The passage we are going to be looking at was a prayer of thanksgiving by King Hezekiah; let’s start reading with verse 17:
Indeed it was for my own peace that I had great bitterness; but You have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption, for You have cast all my sins behind Your back. For Sheol cannot thank You, death cannot praise You; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for Your truth. The living, the living man, he shall praise You, as I do this day; the father shall make known Your truth to the children. “The Lord was ready to save me; therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments all the days of our life, in the house of the Lord.”
2. The study of history reminds that God does not use super-saints to carry out his will, but instead chooses to use sinners just like you and me.
King Hezekiah, from our perspective, was a good man. The vast majority of his life had been spent in obedience to God’s commands. Even so, it is a good idea to remember that, just like the rest of us, King Hezekiah was a sinner. I bring that up, because I want us to clearly understand that if God had decided to go ahead and let Hezekiah die, it would have been perfectly just for Him to have done so. The extension to King Hezekiah’s life was nothing but an act of mercy on God’s part.
I hope you can see where I am going with this. The fact is that every single one of us who are members of the body of Christ have been recipients of mercy through His Son, Jesus Christ. Without exception, every one of us were born sinners, enemies of God and objects of His wrath. Furthermore, had He so decided, He could have damned every one of us, as well as everyone throughout history, and would have been completely just in doing it. But, instead, He poured His justice and wrath out on His Son, and extended the hand of mercy to us.
That not only applies to all of us, but to everyone in history to whom God has given salvation. Let me give you an example: I am quoting here from Mairé DePaur’s biography of St. Patrick, where she comments on a passage from his Confession; this is Patrick’s testimony:
…But I do know most surely that indeed before I was humbled I was like a stone lying in deep mire and He who is mighty came and in His mercy lifted me up and, more than that, truly raised me aloft and placed me on the highest wall…
Now, listen to her commentary on this passage:
...Patrick is claiming his baptismal birthright as an adopted son of his Heavenly Father; God had compassion on His helpless son who was like a stone buried in the mud and filth of the human condition. Down into this deep mire came God’s all-holy Son. With His wounded hands He delved into that mire and searched until he found the helpless Patrick lying like a stone in its depths; then, placing those sacred hands carefully under him, He lifted him out of that mud and filth, raised him aloft, and placed him on the highest wall, as Patrick the convert, the bishop, and the pilgrim-apostle of Ireland….
Throughout the history of the church, you will hear account after account of people just like Patrick, who were saved from the penalty and the power of sin by God’s mercy. In fact, you could say that the history of the church is one big story of God’s mercy in action.
Why Study Theology From a Bunch of Dead Guys, Part 1 August 12, 2007
Posted by theshadow in : Church History , add a commentOur question is, “Why should we study theology from a bunch of dead guys?” Now, I have to admit to you that this title is not completely original. In studying for this series of lessons, there is a Web site that looks to be very helpful, called the “Hall of Church History.” This Web site is one of the best at directing you to the writing of significant people throughout church history, and helping you to understand what they believed and taught, from the greatest of theologians like Augustine, Luther and Calvin, to heretics like Arius, Pelagius and Finney. But the thing that I find to be so amusing about this Web site is its subtitle, which is “Theology From a Bunch of Dead Guys.”
And, even though the gentleman that maintains the Web site, Philip Johnson, is using this subtitle in a tongue-in-cheek manner, sadly, I do believe that it conveys the attitude that many people hold when it comes to church history: just theology from a bunch of dead guys. What good is that? Why should we even care what a bunch of dead guys thought, write, or taught? What does that have to do with us?
Then there are those who say that they are interested in church history, but it turns out that their interest tends to be focused only on the little sphere in which they are involved. It reminds me of a “Peanuts” cartoon historian Bruce Shelley has hanging on the door of his office, in which Charlie Brown’s little sister, Sally, is writing a paper on church history. She writes, “To understand church history, you have to go back to the very beginning; our pastor was born in 1930.” In Sally’s mind, and in the minds of many Christians, nothing of importance happened in the church before their congregation began, or before their denomination was formed. (By the way, in an aside note, let me say that, to some degree, I believe that we who are Reformed often tend toward this mindset, myself included. Sometimes we act as if nothing of any import happened in church history before October 31, 1517, the day Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenburg church.)
Consequently, too many people are asking, “Why should we study history? Is it really necessary? Does history have anything to teach us today? Why bother? What happens if we don’t study history?” Over the next few posts, I hope to answer at least some of those questions.
We will be reading from Joshua 4, verses 21-24. However, before we read the passage, it is a good idea to put it all into context. The children of Israel were just coming to the land that the Lord had promised them, but before they could enter it, they had to cross the Jordan River while it was at flood stage (Joshua 3:15). I won’t go into all of the details about how they prepared for this, but the Bible tells us that God backed up the waters of the Jordan, just as He had the Red Sea, and the people crossed over on dry ground. In the process, Joshua had 12 of the men pick up stones from the riverbed and carry them to the other side, and set the up on the opposite bank of the Jordan at Gilgal. Now let’s take a look at our passage, beginning with verse 21:
Then he spoke to the children of Israel, saying: “When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, ‘What are these stones?’ then you shall let your children know, saying, ‘Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry land’; for the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed over, that all the peoples of the earth may know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever.”
1. The study of history reminds that God is sovereign over every facet of life, including history.
The passage tells us that, at the Lord’s command, Joshua had those 12 stones set up as an everlasting reminder that it was only through the power of God that they had been able to cross the Red Sea and the Jordan River. By that same token, every time we look at any church where the gospel is preached, it should remind us that this is the result of God’s power at work.
Over the next few lessons, we will see how what began as a very small group of men, most of whom were relatively uneducated by the world’s standards, and who had no real charisma about their personalities, stood the Roman Empire on its head, preaching nothing but the message of the cross and the empty tomb. That was the power of God at work.
This is shown not only in the small numbers with which the church was started, but also in the lives of the apostles themselves: Simon Peter, always opening his mouth before his brain was engaged; James and John, always wanting to be first in Christ’s kingdom; Thomas, who wouldn’t believe anything, unless he had empirical evidence to satisfy his doubt; Saul the Pharisee, later known as Paul the Apostle, who was trying to make a name for himself among the Pharisees by persecuting every Christian he could find. Then you also have to take into account the cowardice that every one of the original 11 showed the night before Christ was crucified by deserting Him (let me say that I am not claiming that I would have done any better; in fact, I would have probably done worse than the rest of them, put together). However, we do have admit that this was not the most stable group of men. But then Pentecost came.
Sometime, I think it would be interesting to do a study contrasting the attitudes of the original 11 in the Gospels with their attitudes in the book of Acts. Its like you are dealing with two sets of completely different people, which, in a way, you are. In the Gospels, they were always worried about what other people would do or think; in the Acts, they simply said, “We must obey God rather than men.” Church tradition tells us that, with the exception of the Apostle John and possibly Matthew, every single one of the original 11 were killed for what they believed and preached. Then, of course, there is the Apostle Paul, who went from being a fire-breathing, legalistic Pharisee, to being the great apostle of grace, who was also beheaded for preaching the Gospel. Nothing but the power of God could have brought about such drastic changes.
But what I want us to notice in these lessons is that such a phenomenon is not just confined to the accounts found in Scripture. On the contrary, throughout the history of the church, you will find example after example that shows us plainly that God is still at work in the hearts and lives of the people who make up His church.
A Prayer of St. Francis August 12, 2007
Posted by theshadow in : Uncategorized , add a commentLord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled, as to console;
Not so much to be understood as
To understand;
Not so much to be loved
As to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying that we awaken to eternal life.
A Series Worth Reading August 12, 2007
Posted by theshadow in : Uncategorized , add a commentIf Jane Marple had lived 900 years ago, no doubt she would have found a kindred spirit in Brother Cadfael. The Brother Cadfael mysteries were the brainchild of Ellis Peters, the pen name for Edith Pargeter (1913-1995), and are set in the 12th Century. Brother Cadfael is a veteran of the First Crusade who has taken the cowl at the Benedictine Abbey of Shrewsbury, England, where he serves as its herbalist.
Of the books in the series I have read, the plots are usually very similar, in that Person A (normally a person of some importance) is murdered, and Person B (frequently one of low birth or someone who has fallen on hard times) is accused of the crime; however, in spite of everyone’s absolute certainty of the accused’s guilt, Brother Cadfael, like a medieval Perry Mason, always looks past the obvious, and gets to the heart of the matter. You would think that such a plotline would get stale after a while, but here is where Ms. Peter’s skill with a pen was most obvious, because while the basic construction of the plot may have rarely changed, she gave you so many variations of it that it never seemed to get old.
In the process, you meet characters who prove that, throughout history, human nature has remained the same:
Brother Cadfael, whose combination of worldly wisdom, dry humor, intellectualism, and compassion could never allow an innocent person to suffer for the crimes of another.
Abbott Radulphus, who is unflappably cool under pressure, and whose calm air of authority can make even the most rich and powerful think twice before defying him.
The aristocratic Prior Robert, whose pride and vanity could try the patience of even the most devout monk.
Brother Jerome, whose self-righteousness never lacks for people of which to disapprove.
Sheriff Prescote, generally a good and honest man, but one who tends to believe that if someone is accused of a crime, then they must be guilty of something. At the same time, it must be said that the good sheriff would never knowingly allow the innocent to be punished for someone else’s deeds.
Hugh Beringar, deputy sheriff; Hugh is the law’s equivalent to Brother Cadfael. An upright man of integrity, Hugh is usually willing to listen to Cadfael, even when he disagrees with him.
The only complaint I have about the books is that, at times, they will use a medieval term without bothering to explain its meaning. Of course, there are times when you can figure out what they mean by the term based on the immediate situation; however, there have been instances when a dictionary was needed. For example, who knew that a rebec was a medieval term for a fiddle?
The books normally are only about 200 pages long, and are very easy to read. While Ms. Peters does give you enough contextual scenery to make you feel like you are actually in the monastery, she does not overload you with it; in these books, the emphasis is always on the plot.
Human Nature #2 August 7, 2007
Posted by theshadow in : Human Nature , add a commentTom joined the new order of Cadets of Temperance, being attracted by the showy character of their “regalia.” He promised to abstain from smoking, chewing, and profanity as long as he remained a member. Now he found out a new thing — namely, that to promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. Tom soon found himself tormented with a desire to drink and swear; the desire grew to be so intense that nothing but the hope of a chance to display himself in his red sash kept him from withdrawing from the order. Fourth of July was coming; but he soon gave that up — gave it up before he had worn his shackles over forty-eight hours — and fixed his hopes upon old Judge Frazer, justice of the peace, who was apparently on his deathbed and would have a big public funeral, since he was so high an official. During three days Tom was deeply concerned about the Judge’s condition and hungry for news of it. Sometimes his hopes ran high — so high that he would venture to get out his regalia and practice before the looking-glass. But the Judge had a most discouraging way of fluctuating. At last he was pronounced upon the mend — and then convalescent. Tom was disgusted; and felt a sense of injury, too. He handed in his resignation at once — and that night the Judge suffered a relapse and died. Tom resolved that he would never trust a man like that again.
The funeral was a fine thing. The Cadets paraded in a style calculated to kill the late member with envy. Tom was a free boy again, however — there was something in that. He could drink and swear, now — but found to his surprise that he did not want to. The simple fact that he could, took the desire away, and the charm of it.
Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer