Food for Thought

Started this like a month ago, got distracted and busy, and just now made the time to finish. Sso it's not actually current, but I haven't really had time to finish it up . . . really should've waited til life was a bit calmer before trying to start this blog up again.

I don't particularly have time to write a post on any of these ideas, but the cow's stomach that is my brain has been regurgitating and re-chewing on this stuff lately.

• Blogger Kirk Miller highlights some of Carl Trueman's rumination's on his essay, "What Can Miserable Christians Sing?" The historic answer (not that anyone cares about that kind of silliness anymore) is: The Psalms. Having shoved aside the psalms in our worship, what have we done? Truman writes:
  

  By excluding the cries of loneliness, dispossession, and desolation from its worship, the church has effectively silenced and excluded the voices of those who are themselves lonely, dispossessed, and desolate, both inside and outside the church. By so doing, it has implicitly endorsed the banal aspirations of consumerism, generated an insipid, trivial and unrealistically triumphalist Christianity, and confirmed its impeccable credentials as a club for the complacent. In the last year, I have asked three very different evangelical audiences what miserable Christians can sing in church. On each occasion my question has elicited uproarious laughter, as if the idea of a broken-hearted, lonely, or despairing Christian was so absurd as to be comical . . .

• Richard Gaffin on the Historicity of Adam. Short, sweet, to the point. (see also Jared Oliphint's 20 Resources on the Historicity of Adam)
  

  if Adam is not the first, who subsequently fell into sin, then the work of Christ loses its biblical meaning. If it is not true that all human beings descend from Adam, then the entire history of redemption taught in Scripture unravels. The result is no redemptive history in any credible or coherent sense and so the loss of redemptive history in any meaningful sense.

• John Calvin gives us a good rule to follow:

  So then, let us remember that whenever mention is made of [Christ's] death alone, we are to understand at the same time what belongs to his resurrection. Also, the same synecdoche applies to the word "resurrection": whenever it is mentioned separately from death, we are to understand it as including what has to do especially with his death.

  (for the quotation in context, click here)
• Gaffin agrees (from Resurrection and Redemption)

  Inseparability, however, is not indistinguishably. Plainly Paul thinks of Christ's death and the resurrection as different events on the same plane of historical occurrence. The resurrection is not an aspect or component part of the death. Rather, as Calvin's statement itself reflects, each has a meaning of its own, which is suppressed at the risk of seriously distorting Paul's gospel.

Thought for the Lord's Day #31

this one's from The Great Quotes to Take Out of Context collection:

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God's glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.

- Martin Luther

Seriously, this counsel to Melanchthon (yet again voted as "Theologian most likely to Have Name Misspelled" for the 487th year running) is well worth meditating on. Even for those of use who are not "preachers of mercy."

Ordinary Means for a Great Day

What then is the first key to a Christian family's spiritual health?...Simply, the first and primary key to your family's spiritual health is a commitment to the weekly public worship services of the church. The most important single commitment you have to make to ensure your family's spiritual well-being is to regular, consistent attendance at public worship.

Sound far-fetched? I'll say it even stronger. I have yet to meet a person for whom it could not be said that all of his problems, personal, marital, familial, or vocational would not be solved by such a commitment. I do not believe that the person for whom this is not true exists. By saying so, I do not minimize the seriousness of the problems that people face. Rather I maximize our confidence in the power of the gospel. So I'll say it again: we do not know of anyone of whom it could not be said, if only he were in worship week in and week out, fifty-two weeks a year, year after year, his problems would be basically solved.

More and more I'm convinced that Terry Johnson is 100% right there. I grow in this confidence weekly, if not daily. I see the positive (and negative) proof in my life and the lives of others. I see people, families, souls destroyed by lack of this commitment; and people, families, and souls built up, restored, and made whole--not to mention holy--by this commitment. [N.B. please note he said "services"--that's plural, that's all of 'em]

It's not the programs, it's not the conferences, special speakers, books, events, CDs...it's not the "WOW! Factor." Nothing zippy or dramatic that brings lasting spiritual growth. It's the ordinary stuff.

Ordinary Means. (not ordinary as in dull, ordinary as in normal) Church attendance; the Word read and preached; baptism; the Lord's Supper; prayer; singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs; fellowship and discipline. The routine, the week-in and week-out work of the Church. That's how Christian people, Christian families, Christian disciples are built.

Yesterday was one of those days that underlined this for me. Highlight of the day was something I'd long prayed for: a new family in our church repented of their former Baptist life and had the remainder of their household baptized. In the morning, our pastor preached a decent sermon (not his best, but decent). In the evening, our seminarian gave our pastor some much needed time off to care for himself and a sick family and delivered an okay exhortation (some improvement there...but far to go). Singing of great songs of the faith. Lots of fellowship--the relaxed chit-chatty kind, the encouraging kind, the iron sharpening iron kind. Sadly, no Lord's Supper this week--that would've sealed it as a perfect day--we're still a 1x a month. But hey, we'll get there...

And now, because of that, I have no doubt that I can get through this many deadline/little sleep/many miles of travel/big stress week without a scratch.

Glory to God for the ways he takes care of His own with the ordinary things.