As a relatively new pastor, I have come to realize to a greater degree the pervasiveness of sin–the tight grip it has on the world and even its influence over Christians. Quickly, I am coming to recognize the essentiality of being skilled in biblical counseling. Sin, with all of its evil, continues to give rise to one of the most common subject matter for counseling–broken or damaged relationships. It sincerely breaks my heart as a pastor, and especially as a fellow-Christian, to see disunity among Christians. This is particularly and pronouncedly true when it comes to broken and damaged marriages.
Why are broken marriages so painful for me to observe? Honestly, it has to do with the fact that “Christians” have lost their fear of God. Consequently, when a man and woman exchange vows on their wedding day, the promise or covenant that that they make with each other, with God, and with the observing congregation becomes nothing more than a formality for many. When people make the decision to get a divorce, they act as functional atheists as they disregard this covenant and promise and spurn the authority of God. Neither is God the foundation of the relationship, nor does He prove to be the Lord or Master of the individuals involved in the relationship. Covenant and promise have sadly lost their significance in this functionally atheistic and pseudo-Christian church culture.
I have recently been encouraged by two videos–one, a conversation between pastors and theologians, and a second, a music video. In these videos, what is made central and foundational to a marriage relationship is not health, comfort, sex, money, romance, chemistry, or anything material or physical; it IS covenant and promise. Marriage relationships will always be wrought with difficulties and challenges, but as Andrew Peterson says, “That’s what the promise is for.” If marriage can be founded on this promise and covenant, then (and only then) will they be able to experience the true joy that the marriage relationship can bring as they seek to live out the Christ-church marital dynamic for the glory of God and their joy. For those of you who might be struggling with your marriage, don’t give up. And look to Christ who has given himself for us, instituting an unbreakable covenant with us in order to save us from our sin. Covenants and promises are not made to be broken. God will never break his. Neither should we.
“If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for the witness of God is this, that he has borne witness concerning His Son. The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son. And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the son has the life; he who does not have the son of God does not have the life.” –1 John 5: 9-12 (NASB)
The clarity with which John makes known the foundational truth of Christ’s supremacy –his complete divinity and humanity is far from ambiguous. Jesus is God. He’s not a lesser god, he’s not a mode of God, he’s not a representation of God. The inspiration of the Holy Scriptures is evidenced in John’s letter addressing the divinity of Christ –a stumbling block to belief by countless millions through the centuries. The word stands in stark opposition to nearly every belief system on the globe from Islam to Atheism. The denial of Christ’s being co-equal with God the father is a dangerous and deceptive doctrine of one of the most prominent contemporary cults: Jehovah’s Witnesses.
As with many topics in theology, a discussion of homosexuality must take into account the historical redemptive metanarrative of the Bible. In this scheme, Christians begin by pondering the nature of the world as it was in the perfect and harmonious state of creation. The first two chapters of Genesis explain that God created everything that exists, and everything that he created he deemed to be good. But, this creation was never meant to be an end in itself. Instead, God intended it to bring about his worship.
The metanarrative progresses and the story unfortunately gets worse. As the third chapter of Genesis rolls around, we see that things go very wrong. Adam and Eve rebel against God’s law, and everything in the world is thrown into confusion. What was originally beautiful and harmonious becomes ugly and dreadful. The whole world is thrown out of rhythm. The hearts, minds, emotions, wills, and bodies of men are corrupted by sin. Relationships are disrupted, and everything in existence is contaminated. God would have been just in killing Adam and Eve. After all, the wages of sin is death. They deserved to die. However, God decided to show them mercy. He provided clothes for them to cover them in their shame. He cast them out of the Garden to keep them away from the tree of life, thus protecting them from an existence of eternal dying. God could have demonstrated his wrath on Adam and Eve. Yet he chose to show mercy.
As the storyline of the Bible continues, we see men and women sinning over and over again. Obviously, something is wrong with us. The good news is that God’s plan of redemption provides a remedy for the problem. As the metanarrative continues, we see glimpses of God’s plan to restore creation through the person and work of the Messiah who would come, Jesus Christ.
The generations preceding ours fought important theological battles concerning the Bible, specifically for inerrancy and infallibility. The fight in our day will be for sufficiency. The following quote is from Andy Naselli, a PhD student of D. A. Carson, from the recent book Don’t Call It a Comeback (Crossway: 2011), edited by Kevin DeYoung. With these words Naselli addresses one of the most serious attacks on the sufficiency of Scripture today:
Some evangelicals believe that God continues to reveal himself with special words and special guidance. Whether we agree that God still speaks like this or not, we must agree that these special words do not carry the authority of Scripture. We can’t be absolutely certain that they actually come from God, so we should never treat these forms of communication the same way we treat God’s communication to us in the Bible. Otherwise we would be adding to the Bible, which is already sufficient as it stands (Kindle edition).
Often at the beginning of a new year believers make a resolution to read the Bible more than they did the year before, perhaps by reading through the entire Bible once in a year. This is certainly a good resolution to make! What I want to address in this blog is why reading the Bible is indeed so important. I addressed this topic partly in a previous blog called “Why the Bible Must Receive at Least the Same Interpretive Respect as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Nevertheless, given that it is the beginning of 2011, and the plethora of Bible reading plans mentioned in the blogosphere recently, it seems important to consider afresh precisely why Bible reading is important. [...]
There was a time in my life when I absolutely hated reading! I couldn’t stand it, and I was really bad at it. It’s not that I couldn’t read or pronounce the words—because I could—but it was more that I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) force myself to sit down and read a book from cover to cover. To me, it was the most painful and arduous task and largest waste of time that I could possibly imagine. I was a math guy (I actually like it; so, I studied and became a mechanical engineer). But, rarely would you find me near a book, except for maybe my nightly Bible reading.
It wasn’t until about the age of twenty that I fully realized—as Mohler points out—that God has chosen to teach His people through the discipline of reading! From the inception of the Church, and throughout the Old Testament, God has instructed His people through the written Word. I had to do a heart check; I realized that God’s Word was available to me, that I was responsible to know it, and that I had to read it in order to know it. My heart and mind were awakened to the majesty of God and His Word. Have you come to this point in your life? Has the Bible gripped you in such a way that you cannot not read it!? If you are a Christian and you don’t like reading, then you need to do a heart check. To use Mohler’s words, “We’re not going to grow if we’re not reading and studying.”
“But now trouble comes to you, and you are discouraged; it strikes you, and you are dismayed. Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope? Consider now: who being innocent, has ever perished? Where were the upright ever destroyed? As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it. At the breath of God they are destroyed; at the blast of his anger they perish.” Job 4:5-8
The book of Job is one of the most vexing and profound works in scripture. One cannot help being troubled and yet amazed when reading the story. Job was a blameless, upright man. His righteousness was such that he actually offered sacrifices for sins his children had possibly committed. But logical deduction fails to vindicate Job. God took up Satan’s challenge that Job only loved God because of the good life he had been given. God tested Job through a series of unparalleled adverse situations. Among them: friends who, far from being sympathetic and consoling, continually condemned Job as a man who must have sinned to have received the terrible tribulation given him. [...]
In this article Ben Montoya discusses part 2 of his interactions with Rob Bell’s ‘Velvet Elvis.’ This heavy, but very important article on Rob Bell is something that all 20-somethings who care about the foundation and authority of Scripture should read and work through. [...]
As we have seen throughout, the need for special revelation to restore crooked and wretched sinners back into communion with a holy, perfect, and just God is found only in the Bible. The Bible tells the story of how a holy, perfect, and just God can forgive such sinners and restore this communion back with a holy, perfect, and just God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The whole Bible tells the story of Jesus and the unfolding revelation of God and how it finds ultimate climax and fulfillment in the gospel message.
What is the gospel message?
The gospel message is that God created humanity to be in perfect relationship with him, but man substituted himself for God in the Garden of Eden, which separated man from God. In turn, man fell into sin and was kicked out of the Garden of Eden. But God in his grace and mercy did not leave man to fin for himself. God established a covenant of circumcision with Abraham in Genesis 17 stating that through this covenant he will be the father of many nations and that this covenant shall be an everlasting covenant. The rest of the Old Testament is about God holding fast to his covenant, but continuing to show his people there need for a Savior (i.e., through the Law (Mosaic Covenant), Davidic Covenant, the Prophets, and Offices – Prophets, Priests, and Kings), God’s people awaited the coming of the Suffering Servant, the Messiah who was Jesus, who fulfilled the covenant that God made with Abraham. This Jesus was born of a Virgin under the power of the Holy Spirit and lived a perfect life under the curse of the law. Jesus in turn substituted himself for us in the same way Adam substituted himself for God in falling into sin. In this way, Jesus became sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Jesus defeated sin at the cross, defeated death at the resurrection, ascended into Heaven, and established his kingdom with the coming of the Holy Spirit. As Christians, our hope is in the second coming of Jesus – who is coming again to establish the New Heavens and New Earth.
Before reading this article please read part 1 and part 2.
Only a brief explanation concerning external justification or evidence shall be said during this section. For a very good and brief synopsis of this, Paul Helm is a very helpful resource on distinguishing between external evidence and internal evidence. He defines external evidence as the view that the Bible can only be said to be of divine origin if it meets certain criteria established independently of it; and internal justification as the view that the Bible ought to be believed to be of divine origin on its own evidence.[1] David Gibson says this concerning Helm in his article on the roles of faith and evidence in believing the Bible,
At first glance the thought of external justification is appealing – it would seem to offer non-arbitrary and generally accepted grounds for concluding that the Bible is the Word of God. However, there are at least three main reasons why we must deem external justification to be highly problematic. Helm outlines these as: 1) Externalism assumes that there is some obvious, unquestionable test or criterion of what is appropriate for a divine revelation, or that there is some a priori standard of reasonableness that the Scriptures must meet. But who is to decide what this standard is? 2) Accepting an external criterion as proof of the Bible’s divine origin is necessarily compromising – it makes the authority of the Bible and of God dependent on the other matters external to the Bible. Acceptance of the Bible as God’s revelation is made to depend on other non-revealed matters. 3)… Even at its best, externalism can only offer the probability that the Bible is God’s Word – and this is not the kind of foundation on which Christian belief about the Scriptures is based.[2]
These specific problems with external justification or evidence lead us transitionally into why internal evidence is the foundational argument for the Bible as God’s Word.
August 13, 2011
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