Surpassing Worth

I really think this has been the greatest sermon he’s ever taught. And all he did was to recite Scripture from memory for the first 15 minutes. Talk about cut to the heart…

Video of “If My Words Abide in You” :: Desiring God

My head feels like it’s going to explode.

I only have classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays this semester, but at the end of the day it’s like I’m on sensory overload. It’s kinda like the feeling after you’ve been strapped inside that virtual roller coaster ride at the amusement park for 8 hours and then you step back out into reality – it’s dizzying.

One thing I can be sure of is that the Word of God is so rich and deep and His realities are so majestic and huge that I can spend a lifetime learning and researching, but will only end up skimming the surface. It’s times like these that I just sit in my chair and am wow’ed by how big God really is.

But the application here is, where does that knowledge lead to. Does it lead to transform into more and more of His likeness or will I twist and delude it for my own gain? I want my mind to be set on high. For it to be held captive by Christ, who is Wisdom. I want not for my thoughts to be mere mental exercise, but fruit bearing work. Wow, I need Jesus.

It’s bone-numbingly cold today. Boston is Sunny with a high of 29 (Sunny and any number below 60 shouldn’t be in the same sentence).

I think when God created the world, he didn’t intend it to be cold. I suspect cold weather is a consequence of the fall of man. I might be wrong, but it sure does feel right.

N.T. Wright, a notable New Testament scholar, was preaching at a Pastor’s Forum this week at GCTS. It was the first time I ever had a chance to hear him speak. I’ve read some books and articles by him, but never heard him speak before. So like a good seminarian, I was giddy to hear a leading scholarly voice expound the New Testament. His focus that day was on the Gospel of John. Now I won’t go in to the particulars of what he preached, but I mainly wanted to emphasize something he got into and what I am learning more and more these days about Scripture, especially regarding the New Testament.

The normative background of the New Testament is the Old Testament. You may even benefit from reading that again, due to its simplicity. As I learn more about how to interpret the Bible, I’m learning that the NT (New Testament) is inextricably linked to the OT (Old Testament). It makes perfect sense even on the surface.

Any good writer knows that you write about what you already know. Even fictional writers will write in light of what they have experienced in real life (even sci-fi has parallels to one’s own understanding of life). Why do guys talk about sports? Because they’re always watching Sportscenter. Why do girls always talk about boys? Because men are awesome (ok, I just threw that in there to see if you were paying attention). Think about it. What comes out of us has correlation with what’s already in us. Now, transplant yourself to the age of the NT writers. What was most prominent on their minds? Duh. The OT. Their religion was rooted in this text and they would’ve known it inside and out, as was customary of teachers and scribes. So in writing the inspired texts of the NT, what would’ve naturally come out? The OT scriptures. It’s that simple.

Why do I even bring this up? Well, because I think in all my studying of the Scripture, up until now, I saw the two testaments as somewhat mutually exclusive. Yes, I did notice that the OT was quoted here and there by several NT authors, but never did I think the relationship went beyond that. What I’m seeing now, as I reread the NT scriptures, is the overwhelming presence of the OT. And in seeing this undeniable link, I’m beginning to gain such a depth of understanding of what the NT writers are actually wanting to communicate through their writing. Amazing stuff that probably only interests me at the moment, but amazing nonetheless.

I’ll give you a small tidbit of what I’m talking about. Look at John 1 and Genesis 1 in parallel. From the get go, do you see something similar? “In the beginning…” Now, I don’t have time nor the scholarship to expound this adequately, but suffice it to say that John is undoubtedly repeating this phrase from the well-known beginning parts of the creation account in Genesis. In the first book of the Pentateuch, God created the earth by His Word. Man destroyed the earth in his sin. But what John is doing here is introducing a New Creation. By referring back to Genesis, John is saying that Jesus is the Word by which God will recreate and reestablish His creation into right order. Jesus is the dawn of the New Creation. What we managed to destroy, Jesus is coming to reclaim and renew. God doesn’t just throw His tainted creation away, as if to give up on it and start all over. But He chooses to restore us back to the way things ought to have been. He saves us. That’s the amazing Gospel! And all of that from just the first three words in John’s Gospel. Trust me, there’s more where that came from, just look.

I encourage you, if you haven’t already, to begin reading your New Testament through the lens of the Old Testament. It will blow your mind. (hint: use those cross-references that you always neglected)

I guess it goes without say. What you believe will inevitably surface in your way of life. I guess I can relate it to something as simple as your choice in what you eat. When it comes to food there are generally three camps: Health Nuts, Gluttons, & the Indecisive. Health Nuts take careful consideration of what they intake, weighing all the nutritional contents, measuring out their daily caloric intake. Gluttons eat as they please and have a more hedonistic approach to food. The Indecisive are those people that can never make up their mind and thus, they never really like it nor do they ever hate it; it’s just whatever. Now for each group, their approach to food is different because of what each of them believes. The Health Nuts believe food is nutritious. Gluttons believe food is pleasure. The Indecisive believe food is…food. Our approach of food and what we actually eat is governed by what we believe to know about food. For if we really believed food to be detrimental to our lives, we’d never eat (and we all know where that will lead us). Truth matters.

If you think truth doesn’t matter. Then you’re gravely mistaken. It dictates nearly everything you do. You do nothing because you just feel like it. You do, because you know. And if there’s one thing I’m learning as I crawl back into the world of being the student again, I’m realizing that what you understand about this world to be true will undoubtedly shape how you will live in this world. For the first time in a long time, I’m being forced to formulate my understanding of what is true. And though it’s a laborious task, it’s rewarding to know that you’re pursuit of knowledge won’t just stop at the head, but will travel down to the hands and feet. Admittedly, it’s much easier to be spoon-fed truisms and ideals, but that will only lead you to live a life that you may or may not agree with. You must find truth, but not only find it; you must own it.

Lord, may I know the ultimate truth that comes only through your living and active voice, which is in the Word. May I clutch tightly to the Word of God, because it is my teacher when the winds of worldy influence are like shifting sand. May I know it, and let it govern the way I live.

Thinking about the ever growing voices of men who have influence over Evangelical Christianity, I’m soberly reminded that though their words and counsel are inspiring, the Word of God is to be primary & foundational. I need always to be fed from the spring, not the faucet.

Let us not build our understanding of God on the shifting sand of human influence, but solely on the immovable rock that is the Word of God.

Influence will wane, clout will change, power will crumble, popularity will shift, but only Your favor will last. God, not man. Him, not them.

I need only entertain an audience of One.

You ever hear a grown man talk about his Bible like this?!

read the article from Mark Driscoll on getting a sneak peek into the up and coming ESV: Study Bible (set to release October 15, 2008)

In the meantime, I’ve been reading out of the Reformation Study Bible, edited by R.C. Sproul (check it out!!)

I’m going to be the first in line to get my hands on one of those ESV: Study Bibles. I’ll race you!

I was listening to a recent podcast by Ravi Zacharias entitled, Creedal Affirmation in Search of Commitment, and in this sermon, Ravi was getting to the point of answering why the Scriptures are necessary and why we need doctrine and teaching of God’s word. He begins with this mind-blowing quote from a secular journalist who wrote an article titled, Who Cares if Christ is Risen?

But what is true at this time in our history is that we are moving into uncharted territory. Since the French revolution, many influential intellectuals have rejected religion. But it is only now that religious ideas are ceasing to underpin general morality. Because these ideas have prevailed for so long, people tend to assume that the morality which goes with them is somehow obvious and commonsensical and will continue. “Love thy neighbor as thy self” is widely believed to be a moral imperative which everyone can accept and try to follow without religious faith as if it were a belief which came naturally to man. But this is a terrible error. No moral doctrine comes naturally. As the derivation of the word “doctrine” implies it has to be taught. It can only be taught if enough people understand the theories on which it rests and have the means of instilling their consequences into the popular mind. We have entered a period in which this is no longer so and we are beginning to see the results.

Most of those who fight to stop hunts killing foxes would think nothing of having abortions. If members of the Animal Liberation Front had been in Jerusalem on that first Good Friday they would have been far too worried about the fate of the donkey, on which Christ entered Jerusalem, to mind that He was being crucified before their eyes. With this loss of a truly human morality comes paradoxically a greater emphasis on the importance of human gratification. As human beings no longer believe that they have a unique standing in the order of divine creation, they turn inwards. The great modern crime is to prevent people doing whatever it is they want to do. On the right this tends to mean complete freedom to make and sell whatever people want to buy. On the left it tends to mean giving government money to anyone who asks for it and arguing that any sexual taste or way of life is equally valid. Being yourself is the thing to be. As if your self was automatically interesting and good. The consequence is that what was once called selfishness is now called fulfillment. The word love is used just as much as it ever was, but it means something else. For a Christian the measure of love is what one is willing to give up for it. For the post-Christian love is the most exciting state of the ego. The social consequences are more greed, more crime, more family breakdown, and more violence and an extreme restlessness which makes contentment almost as outdated a word as Crenalin. And although many non-believers dislike these trends just as much as Christians, they are almost powerless to do anything about them. For religion has an extraordinary and unique capacity to keep sublime concepts of beauty and truth and the principals of conduct derived from them in the minds of ordinary people. Without religion few know what to think and into the vacuum created for superstition, fanaticism, and pure brutishness. To all of this the atheist will answer, “You may be right about the social consequences about the loss of faith, but that is simply the pain that results from people discovering they’ve been living a lie. Our duty is to develop a new way of living based on the truth” This may be an honorable position, but another possibility presents itself. It is that our moral beliefs will decay if they are cut off from their source, just as a stream will become a stagnant pool if it is no longer fed by its spring. And that this is what is happening in the West today. The injunction to “love thy neighbor” is not a statement of the obvious, it is a commandment and one which only makes sense because it flows from the first commandment, “love thy God”. We must obey it because it is true and we know it is true because of the event which this day, Easter, commemorates.

Isn’t it completely insightful of our generation? We are so caught up on doing what is “right”. We have more humanitarian groups and more justice organizations than we’ve ever had before. More movies are being made to bring to light social injustices than ever before. More celebrities are linking up with social awareness groups and more “good” is being done in this world (most of us have facebook groups to prove it). It’s all for a great cause and I see that we’re all wanting to take part in this movement to make a difference in this world and do something “right” for a change. But I ask, where does it all come from?

“Ethics is not self-evident, let’s stop fooling ourselves,” says Ravi. Their is no morality as we know it without ultimately pointing to God, who is good, fair, and just. And this is why we need the Word of God. We must recognize that all our human endeavors to “love thy neighbor” flow from a doctrine which is eternally true, “love thy God”. A morality that is self-evident will ultimately contradict itself, because the same person that cares for the dying polar bears in the Antarctic, will often neglect the hurting brother within their own home. The moral imperative stems from the eternal indicative that God is good, therefore we are to be good and do good unto others. As the above writer mentions the moral stream of our beliefs must always be fed by the greatest moral spring, namely God.

We love simply because God is love.

Robert Half, “When one teaches, two learn.”

Yea, read that one more time. Let it soak.

The more and more I preach and teach the Bible, I believe I’m learning just as much, probably even more than anyone that’s listening. I guess it’s the greatest perk of being in a position to teach. Not only are you given the privilege to influence people, but you grow that much more because you’re forced to learn the subject (and when the subject is God, it just doesn’t get any better than that).

While I’m still young in my preaching and teaching career, I’m learning the invaluable lesson that I need to be continuously learning in order to be effectively teaching. As is often said, “Leaders are Readers”. A mind that’s fed is a mouth that can feed others. I never want to stop learning. I never want to think I know enough. Because the minute I do, I’m going to be disqualified to teach.