What I am Reading

This is a book that every Christian should read at least once. Augustine Confessions is a classic. Do not let the title misled you. Augustine doesn’t mean confessions in the sense of exposing his guilt and sin (although he does that), but rather a confession of faith in Christ. Augustine believes that since man has been created by God it is his natural “instinct to praise you.” “The thought of you (God) stirs him (man) so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.” I have read this classic probably a half a dozen times in my life and it never grows stale. It is a great aid for worship and prayer. I was fortunate to familiarize myself with it once again last November when I wrote a major paper on Augustine’s view of the psalms.

Help!!

“The woman in Paradise announced death to her husband, and the women in the church announced salvation to the men.”

Nuts and Bolts

Recently I watched the movie “The Fighter”.  I honestly don’t watch many movies, and most I do watch are lame.  Aside from the profane language (this isn’t a family film), this movie best depicts the neighbor I grew up in.  I saw crack houses, prostitutes, brawls, and straight forward language.  Christian Bale should have received an Oscar for his performance.  As I watched the movie, I recalled my old neighborhood, and the grace of Jesus that rescued me from its ills.  I could have easily been a criminal or harmed, but God in his kind mercy delivered me from it.
Speaking of movies, here is a recent news poll where scientists actually gauged the saddest movie in terms that make you cry the most.  It seems my sister has been right for all these years.

John MacArthur on Fashionable Preachers

“I sometimes think no group is more fashion-conscious than the current crop of hipster church planters—except perhaps teenage girls.”

Update on Southern

Recently I headed back to Louisville for half of a seminar on Baptist Spirituality with a particular emphasis on Benjamin Beddome.  I am thankful to Dr. Michael Haykin and the other men that are part of this seminar.  And my gratitude goes out to my family and church for making this possible.

Fredrick Dale Burner on Christ Death for all Saints

I have mentioned before but I and the evangelical world is indebted to the Matthew commentary by Frederick Dale Bruner.  This two volume set is on every page a classic example of what superb exegesis looks like.  Bruner comments on the section in chapter 27 when saints come back from the dead when Jesus dies.
“The most helpful doctrinal point in this text is this: Jesus death is as effective BC as it was AD; Jesus death is as retroactive into the past as it is proactive into the future.  A frequently asked question in Sunday school class is: What about all the people before Christ who looked for God’s saving work?” These opened tombs tell us that Jesus’ death has as much power to raise those who looked forward to God’s salvation as it does raise those who look back on it.  Thus Christ’s death is as cosmic in time as it is cosmic in space.  The death of Jesus reaches out as far horizontally into history as it reaches up vertically into eternity.  The two directions of the cross-outward and upward, teach the universality of Christ’s work.”

Vance Havner’s The Corner Mailbox

A few weeks ago in a sermon I quoted from Vance Havner, a Southern Baptist evangelist from the 20th century.  Havner is very quotable.  He is basically an evangelical Will Rodgers.  He had a knack for taking novelty items and presenting Christian truths.  One passage he wrote was called “The Corner Mailbox”.  He uses the image of an old country mailbox which is ordinary by any standards and parallels the Christian.  Havner writes, “the mailbox is important, not because of what it is in itself, but what it belongs to, and is part of, something greater than itself.  It is a unit in the great postal system and although that little mailbox, unassisted could never deliver my letter to my beloved, was a part of a great movement that could.  You and I are not much in ourselves, but when we get into the will of God and become part of His great purpose we assume an importance and share a responsibility infinitely beyond ourselves.  This mailbox, set out in a field somewhere, disconnected from its system would be useless.  It would neither receive nor transmit that stream of human communication for which it was made.  Just so, many a life out of God’s will, isolated and alone, living for self and none beside can never be blessed and never be a blessing.
Suppose that mailbox complained and grumbled, “Why did they ever set me on this dirty corner?  I wanted so much to be up on the boulevard, among the bright lights and the fine shops, and here I am stuck in this dark, drab spot.”  But if it is in line with the postal system it can fulfill its function just the same, and the location doesn’t make an awful lot of difference.  When we enter into the plan and purpose of God we assume a priceless value because of Him whose we are and Whom we serve.

To The Garden We Go...

Since my last post, people have pitied me and given me some of their garden tomatoes due to the meager harvest of mine.  As stated previously, this probably has been the worst gardening experience of my life.  I am expectant to pick one of my cantaloupes any day now.
The additions of the garden continues, when I mounted this cedar mailbox by the kids playhouse.  They enjoy retrieving cards, mail and small gifts from it as well as corresponding to each other using it.

Charles Spurgeon

“The first Adam sinned in a garden and spoiled our nature; the second Adam slept in a garden and restored our loss.”

What I am Reading

Ian Randall’s “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” is a historical work that traces the Christian spirituality throughout Protestant circles.  “What a Friend” is an easy and inspirational read.  Randall deals with issues involving spirituality both in contemporary times and in times past.  Some of the issues are: holy affections, conversion, the Bible, the sacraments, prayer and praise, the cross, Holy Spirit and holiness, fellowship of believers, mission and last things.  These are a wealth of information that affects for lesser or greater our spirituality.

SAINTS ON THE RESURRECTION SKEPTICS

John Chrysostom put what is involved here plausible: “How could the disciples. . . have been able to persuade the multitude?  By saying what?  By doing what?  Seeing him yet alive and merely seized, they had fled; and after his death were they  likely to speak boldly in His behalf, unless He had risen again?”
Matthew Henry calls the leaders “suspicions groundless because when the disciples had not had the courage to own him while he lived…it was not likely that his death should put courage into such cowards.”
John Calvin, “Christ’s resurrection would have been more obscure or, at any rate, their ability to deny it would have been all the greater, if they had not taken such care to place witnesses over the tomb.”

JOHN STOTT INTERVIEW

I mentioned a few weeks ago about the death of John Stott.  Last week was his funeral service, and Al Mohler honored him by bringing back an interview from the archives.

Nuts and Bolts

In case you have not heard, read, or seen the famous or infamous or hilarious prayer that occurred on the NASCAR circuit a few weeks ago, here’s a peak.

NASCAR is one of my favorite sports.  I have gone to Kansas speedway and watched the big boys.  I have enjoyed the sport all the way back to Cal Yarborough and Richard Petty.  My dad loved Bobby Allison.  I owned a Mustang that was a hotrod.  I am thankful that the sport at least allows praying to Jesus.  The prayer would have been clever had it not been taken from a movie, but the pastor has got some publicity out of it. 
Mark Coppenger a former professor and seminary President of mine had a winsome article about it.

Thomas Jefferson's Bible

Thomas Jefferson’s Bible more precisely his “Extracts from the Gospels” ends with the burial of Jesus, “and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.”  This is an inadequate ending to a “Gospel”.  If Jesus had remained in the grave, the Christian movement would have ended.  Mary Magdalene and her companion would have been the only church left.  But exciting things happened, and a process of multiplication began that has not stopped. 

Update on Southern

I have completed my fourth and final research language for my PhD-German.  So I have Greek (my favorite and most familiar), Hebrew (brutal), Latin (my second favorite, and impressive to whisper to the lady in my life), and now German.  I could not accomplish this language in eight weeks without my tutor Rusty Tryon who majored in German and teaches Theological German at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.  Now I will celebrate with some sausage, kraut, and red cabbage.

Frederick Dale Bruner on Preaching

“I believe that faithful exposition of exactly what each text in Scripture teaches, paragraph by paragraph, week after week, will keep churches from becoming either too sweet or too sour.” 

Jerome on the Women at the Cross

Jerome believed the women at the tomb were rewarded for their faithful service by being the first to see the resurrected Jesus, and consequently the first to be evangelists.  “When the others had forsaken the Lord, the women persevered in their office…so they merited to be the first to see the Risen One”.

To The Garden We Go...

This is a pretty good indication of life in the garden this last month.  The past two years have been the worst production of my life.  My tomatoes are bearing little fruit.  My squash and zuccinni are gone.  My corn has shriveled up to nothing.  I am still getting a few cucumbers, and my melons are starting to come in, but nothing to brag about.  Oh well, gardening is a good lesson about Christianity; sometimes there is a dry period before the rains come in and fruit finally bears.  Thank God I have a basement to hibernate in until October. 
Here is a picture of an old replica of a thermometer on our front porch I purchased earlier this year, not that I go out and look at it much.  It reminded me of my grandpa’s that he hung on his light pole on the farm, and looked at it religiously.

Happy Birthday, Anita

                                            Happy Birthday to my “smokin’ hot wife” without whom…

What I am Reading

This is a standard resource on the history of missions.  No serious student of missions should be without it.  Neill teaches history with a point, and will leave the reader inspired to be involved in the advancement of the faith once delivered for all the saints. 

Martin Luther

Luther believed that the soldiers confession “is the sign of the power of the death of Christ…the blood of Christ not only wakens dead bodies (Matthew 27:52), but also sinners souls (Matthew 27:54).

John Stott

John R.W. Stott died last week and is now living in the presence of the Christ that he so clearly and simply presented to us. 
Stott wasn’t perfect.  There are moments when some evangelicals had their concerns about Stott.  Such as when he strongly opposed Martin Lloyd Jones warnings about ecumenicalism and its relationship to the gospel, and his flirting with annihilationism was problematic.  Yet Stott was and will forever receive my admiration.  Here is what he gave the evangelical world and myself.

1.  A living example of self-denial.  Stott remained single his entire life and gave much of his material possessions back to the poor and needy.  He was a reminder of living doctrine in word and deed.

2. An incredible preacher.  Not all preachers are created equal, some are clearly gifted more than others.  Stott had the gift.  A particular type of preaching gift that rare have.  Stott could preach on an entire chapter and with great clarity wrap his whole sermon around one, central idea that was the point of the text.  He was masterful in making lofty and sometimes difficult exegesis look easy.

3. A scholarly pastor.  I fear for my generation and those younger.  We are grooming a generation of prima dona type pastors that are more celebrity than scholarly.  When a lot of men, plant a church and with clever marketing grow large ministries, but bypass hours of scholarship I dread to see what their ministries will look like in a decade.  Stott provides an illustration that one can be a pastor and know his text outwardly and inwardly and using that text masterfully rather than relying on slick technique or shocking language or sophomoric books.

4.  A historic writer.  I was in junior high when I first read Basic Christianity and have read many of his commentaries and books since.  But it was as freshmen in college that I read The Cross of Christ and I have read it every year since that time.  It is epic and riveting and one of my favorite books ever written.  

So I praise the God Who created John Stott, and I praise the Son Whom Stott exalted every chance he got, and I praise the Spirit Whose presence seemed to be in everything Stott said or did.  
Here is the memorial website to learn more about John Stott