The Christian's Highest Affection

Last night my daughter screamed at her little brother. I mean, she let him have it at the top of her lungs! I had just returned from a conference and had brought her a little box of special soap and he broke the cardboard box that her soap had come in. And when my wife intervened, my daughter yelled at her as well. Over a soap box. At that point, I intervened. And after the intervention was over, I sat down with her to talk about what had happened.

"Why are you so upset?" I asked. "Because Haddon breaks my stuff and doesn't respect it," was her reply. Even though she wasn't yelling anymore (she never yells at me--one of the perks of being dad, nobody yells at me no matter how angry they might be), I could hear in her voice that the anger remained.

"It's just a box, honey. And your brother is only three years old. It isn't worth getting so upset that you yell at your brother, and it certainly isn't an excuse to raise your voice to your mom."

"But it's important to me," she said. "It is special because you gave it to me and he wrecked it even when I asked him not to."

And there it was. The little box was important to her. She valued it and she had turned on her little brother and her mother in unbridled fury because of the level of importance she had assigned to it. She had elevated her affection for that object over her affections for her family members and when something had happened to this little thing she so valued, she snapped. And she sinned.

We do the very same thing every time we sin, because sin, at it's root, is the preference of something over God. We were created to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. We were created with the purpose of desiring God over everything else. The psalmist wrote,

"Whom have I in heaven but You?
And besides You, I desire nothing on earth...
But as for me, the nearness of God is my good;
I have made the Lord God my refuge,
That I may tell of all Your works." (Psalm 73:25, 28)

This is the intent when God created us. This is the way things ought to be. Sadly, this is not the way things are.

Ever since the Fall, man has been supplanting God's rightful place in our lives with other things. When Eve gave into the serpent's temptation and ate the fruit, she desired something more then she desired God. Her desire for God was to be demonstrated by her obedience to His command, but in her disobedience, she demonstrated that He was not her greatest desire. This pattern has been repeated ever since.

And so it is with every sin. We sin whenever we desire something more then we desire God. When we yield to the temptation to sin, we are elevating the pleasure experienced in connection with that sin over the value of God in our lives and the joy that comes when things are in their proper perspective. We are declaring that we do not believe that God's nearness is our good, and we are putting our faith in something else. Sin is the unseating of God from the throne of our lives. He is displaced and replaced. And He will not share His glory with another.

As a Christian, I must learn to understand sin as God sees it. I must learn to see that for me to desire anything more then I desire Him is to sin against Him. This means that I must constantly be aware of the enticements around me, especially those that are not sinful in and of themselves, but can become issues of sin if I elevate them above God. In this series of posts, it is my hope to address how the Christian can do battle with this enemy that continuously seeks to unseat God from His rightful place as our highest affection.

Desiring God Pastor's Conference

I just returned from the 2015 Desiring God Pastor's Conference  in Minneapolis and I thought I would share a few thoughts on the experience. In the coming days I hope to post  a few remarks on each of the plenary messages.

This was my first time at a DG conference, so I have nothing to compare it to as a means of judging this year's event from previous events. All in all, I thought it was an excellent conference. The conference theme was"The Rebellion of Man and the Abundance of Grace." There were six plenaries (DG has made the videos available), each of which addressed an aspect related to this theme.

• The Origin, Essence, and Definition of Sin (John Piper)
• In Adam All Die: Sin's Guilt and Curruption and the Remedy of God's Grace (Bryan Chapell)
• The Wages of Sin: The Punishment of Evil at the Cross and in Hell (Conrad Mbewe)
• The Guilt of the Nations and the Gospel of Repentance (Steve Childers)
• Make War: The Pastor and His People in the Battle Against Sin (John Piper)
• O, That Day, When Freed From Sinning (Sam Storms)

In addition to the plenaries, there were workshop tracks for participants to attend, including tracks for elders, pastors, worship leaders and women (as I understand it, this was the first year that DG invited women to attend the pastor's conference). I wish that there had been more workshops available. As it was, they only offered them on the first day of the conference.

I enjoyed a series of short talks on the seven deadly sins. A new book on the topic has been published on the topic and each of the authors took turns talking for about 10 minutes each on one of these besetting sins. It was a unique approach to a subject that usually doesn't find a lot of attention in protestant circles. You can view these talks here.

The bookstore was typical, with recommended reading on the conference theme, and there were the usual representation of seminaries and colleges. A number of ministries were on-site as well, and it was neat to talk with their representatives and hear how God has been working through them. 

I was impressed with the music that led off each session. It was deep, theologically rich, and Christ-centered. I heard a number of songs that I was unfamiliar with, but they were easy to pick up and sing. Far from being performance-oriented, the music was clearly designed to invite conference attendees to participate in worshiping God. I have already recommended several songs to those involved with music at my home church to consider including in our repertoire.

All in all, the conference was excellent and I enjoyed it a great deal. The plenary messages were the highlight. Each speaker was passionate about his material and subject and crafted his message with pastors in mind. Each speaker is himself a pastor and so understands well the challenges of ministering to people.

Finally, the conference is in the process of transferring from Desiring God to Bethlehem College and Seminary. This year (and next) was a cooperative effort between the two, after which Bethlehem will be taking over organizational responsibilities. 

"God Gave Them Over..."

"God gave them over..."

These words, repeated three times, are found in the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, and of all the commentary written on the human condition, these words might be the saddest of all, for they represent the reality of a horror that few are aware exists, much less that is descriptive of them.

"God gave them over" means that God, in response to man's demand, turns him over to himself. He gives him what he wants. When we reject Him as God, preferring another or other gods, God responds by turning us over to ourselves.

To some, this may sound pretty good, but here's the problem: we are simply terrible at being God. We suck at it. We are immeasurably bad at it. If being God were playing golf, we would not even be allowed on the course because of how totally devoid we are of any skill whatsoever. It is the highest form of hubris to think that we can do better then God, that we know better, and yet that is exactly what we do when we say, "no thanks, God. I'm not interested in You. I prefer someone else, someone of my own design." This is what we have done in exchanging the glory of the incorruptible for the corruptible. Thinking ourselves so wise, we do the dumbest, most foolish thing we can do. We reject the best for the worst when we should give Him glory and thanks. After all, that is the reasonable thing to do.

But we are not operating according to reason, a reality made evident by virtue of the fact that we can't even see how terrifically awful we are at being God. Our minds have been darkened. It is a frightening fact that when we reject the truth, when we walk away from the light, we lose all ability to distinguish truth from untruth. Stumbling along blindly, the dangers that lie in our path are not recognized until we have already stumbled over them, and by then it is too late to do anything about it with our new god-powers. And yet we stubbornly continue on, foolishly and irrationally clinging to the fiction which is that we know what we are doing and that we can do it a lot better then God can. We abandon the truth and we embrace a lie. A lie nearly as old as creation itself. A lie which claims that God is superfluous, unnecessary, like a divine appendix. He can stay there so long as He's quiet, but if He causes us any trouble, we are better off without Him.

And so we declare that, for all practical purposes, God is dead. He has been usurped by another, and this god is in full agreement with us. Because he/she/it is us. This god may take many forms, from a golden calf to a stack of money to a __________-- you fill in the blank. But in the end, no matter the form it may take, what we are doing is declaring that we ourselves are god. We give ourselves the glory and we give ourselves the thanks (how silly we must look thanking ourselves! It's like a monumental delusion of grandeur blended with a heaping scoop of schizophrenia.) And we thumb our nose at the now-useless God and with a hearty "amen" declare ourselves blessed forever.

And God let's us do it. He gives us over to ourselves: to our lusts, to our passions and to the depravity of our minds. "This is what you want?" He asks. "Very well, this is what you shall receive." And the gavel drops and the sentence is pronounced and we walk out of the courtroom smirking, thinking ourselves so wise.

And hell begins.

Because we have exchanged the Lord for a lord, and that is never a wise capital investment. The return is simply atrocious. Furthermore (and oh, this is rich!), as a result of God confirming upon us what we have demanded, we are blinded to the blunder we have made. We barrel on mindlessly, stupidly unaware of the danger because we have demanded that all proximity alarms be deactivated. As a result of this horrible judgment of God--a judgment which we ourselves demanded--our very minds become enslaved to our stupidity. We have not emancipated ourselves from God. We have only exchanged Him for one who does not regard us as He does, but rather enslaves us to ourselves with a hiss and an asphyxiating squeeze.

There is the irony! Like a snake that begins to devour itself tail-first, so it is the way of man, slowly destroying himself while simultaneously believing that all is well. Sin upon sin, building on itself and then building on itself some more. Higher and higher and with greater depravity, until at last this monstrosity we have been constructing becomes more then we can maintain and comes crashing down. We have demanded more then we can bear. We do not possess the ability to be God and at last that truth dawns on us. But the light which brings this dawning of understanding does not bring with it a relief from the oppressive weight, for it is not the light of salvation. Rather it is the light given off by a destructive fire that never fully destroys and never is extinguished. We have asked for a life without God. God has obliged us in our request.

And hell begins.

Christ as the Climax of History

In his commentary on Romans¹, Doug Moo presents a conceptual framework for understanding what has taken place in Christ. He writes:

"God's work in Christ is the center of history, the point from which both past and future must be understood...With Christ as the climax of history, then, history can be divided into two 'eras.' or 'aeons,' each with its own founder--Adam and Christ, respectively--and each with its own ruling powers--sin, the law, flesh, and death on the one hand; righteousness, grace the Spirit, and life on the other. All people start out in the 'old era' by virtue of participation in the act by which it was founded--the sin of Adam...But one can be transferred into the 'new era' by becoming joined to Christ, the founder of that era, thereby participating in the acts through which that era came into being--Christ's death, burial, and resurrection."

I have taken the liberty of creating a graphic to try and capture Dr. Moo's argument:

As Moo notes, this was the popular way that the Jews understood the division of history. However, Paul nuances his understanding by recognizing that while "the new era has begun--has been inaugurated--...it has not yet replaced the old era. Both ages exist simultaneously..." The ruling powers of the old era are still functional in spite of the presence of the ruling powers of the new era. Moo writes,

Thus, the 'change of aeons,' while occurring historically at the cross...becomes real for the individual only at the point of faith. The 'change of aeons' that took place in Christ is experienced only 'in Christ.' Therefore, the person who lives after Christ's death and resurrection and who has not appropriated the benefits of those events by faith lives in the old era; enslaved to sin, in the flesh, doomed to eternal death."

The following graphic illustrates this concept.

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1 Douglas J. Moo. The Epistle to the Romans. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans, 1996. 25-27.^↩

Trembling At His Word

The last chapter of Isaiah begins like this:

Thus says the Lord:

“Heaven is My throne,
And earth is My footstool.
Where is the house that you will build Me?
And where is the place of My rest?
For all those things My hand has made,
And all those things exist,”
Says the Lord.
“But on this one will I look:
On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit,
And who trembles at My word.

In these verses, the prophet proclaims that the Lord who is sovereign over all of creation says that what He values the most--the one to whom He will turn His gaze--is the one who is poor and has a contrite spirit and trembles at His word.

I have been thinking about that last line all day. And as I have thought about it, I have been asking myself, "Is this true of me? Do I tremble at His Word?" Do I even want to?

I recently heard Francis Chan say something related to this as he was recounting something one of his seminary professors had said to his class. It was a warning. A warning that the great danger of seminary is that the student can get into the habit of hearing and knowing the Word of God, but not doing anything about it. That can easily happen in a church as well. It can happen to me. It can happen to you.

Imagine for a moment what it must have been like to be one of the disciples who accompanies Jesus onto the Mount of Transfiguration. What that experience must have been like! To see what they saw, a glimpse of Jesus glory, Unmasked. Unshrouded. And then this voice comes from heaven: "This is My Son. Listen to Him." I would have been trembling at His word then, that's for sure!

So why don't I tremble at the reading of God's Word? Why does it not regularly result in an obedient response from me, the appropriate response of a poor and contrite heart that recognizes itself as such? I am good with Bible study, but how about Bible obedience?

Could it be that I have formed a habit of hearing and even knowing the Word, but not doing anything about it? This is a question I need to meditate upon on a regular basis with a sense of my own poverty and a contrite spirit.

No Partition Wall for Whitefield

"The year of 1730, a notable one for American Christianity, witnessed the arrival of 26-year-old George Whitefield, already famous for his evangelical preaching in England. Whitefield, a Church of England priest, welcomed as co-laborers Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Dutch Reformed, and anyone else who preached individual conversion. As he crossed the Atlantic, he wrote to a clergyman friend in England: 'The partition wall has for some time been broken down out of my heart, and I can truly say whoever loves the Lord Jesus, “the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.'"

~ Raymond Settle

Whitefield echos here another great evangelist, the Apostle Paul, who wrote these words to the church in Colossae:

"But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him—a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all. So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity." ~ Colossians 3:8-14

For Paul and for Whitefield, the great unifier of the Church is Jesus Christ who "is all, and in all." For believers, this means that certain things must change with respect to how we relate to one another; how we disagree with one another; how we challenge one another. We do no have permission to see anyone with whom we share the benefits of the cross as anything less then as Paul refers to us: "those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved..."

This does not mean, of course, that we cannot disagree or challenge one another--Whitefield's disagreements with John Wesley are legendary, and Paul was certainly no wilting flower when it came time to address those with whom he disagreed. But in these disagreements, we have no right to see our fellow Christian as less then God does, nor to treat them, publicly or privately, in thought or word, in any manner other then with compassion, kindness, gentleness, and patience. Anything less is to put on the old self and the evil practices that comprise its DNA and to rebuild the partition wall that the Lord seeks to break down in each of our hearts.

Why I Use Bible Software...And Don't.

I have been a regular user of Bible software since my days in Bible college. I purchased a copy of Logos (back then the software was called Libronix) and it revolutionized my study! I mean it changed everything. All of a sudden I was able to do things like word studies and background information research in mere seconds. Where before I would spend hours in the library in front of the card catalog (remember those?) and then flipping through countless pages in search of the information I needed, my new electronic research assistant did all that for me faster then it took me to open another bottle of Mt. Dew (some research aids will never change!).

Over the years, my research needs have progressed and changed as I transitioned out of writing research papers for classes and into writing sermons, lectures, articles and Bible lessons for the church. I have kept up-to-date with the latest versions of Logos as they have been released, continually amazed at how much simpler it has become to do even complex linguistic analysis in the original languages. The ability to find what I am looking for in the Bible is literally as easy as typing in part of a single word, and then scanning the generated report for the verse in question. Of course, mobility has increased as well, and today the Bible is just a swipe away.

Bible software is awesome. I love it. I'm sold on its value and on its power to open up the biblical world and text to the reader. I thank the Lord for it. But along with an acknowledgment of the value of our modern software comes a nagging sense of unease; for all the great leaps we have made in putting Bible study power in the hands of anyone who wants to utilize it, is there any sense that this same ability may actually diminish the capture of biblical truth in our hearts and minds?

Allow me to illustrate (I am a preacher, after all). When I was about twelve years old, the church I grew up in (and now serve at) hosted a prophecy conference and invited Dr. John Walvoord of Dallas Theological Seminary to present a series of lectures. I clearly remember how Dr. Walvoord stepped up to the platform, laid his Bible on the lectern and proceeded to teach on the doctrine of Christ's return. In and of itself that doesn't seem unusual or unique. What made it so unusual and memorable was how he tied dozens and dozens of passages from the Old and New Testaments together, all quoted from memory, never turning a page in his Bible. I was blown away then, at age twelve, and I have never forgotten that demonstration of the power of the internalized Word!

Of course this is something of an extreme and unique example. I mean, we are talking about a seminary professor who had devoted much of his professional and devotional life to the study of the Scriptures related to the Lord's return. We would expect him to demonstrate a mastery of his material. I concur. But what I think is unique and increasingly uncommon is how he developed this ability. He did so by devoting himself to the task of hiding the Scriptures in his memory. That doesn't come by accident, nor is it going to come if our default is to hand over to the search engine what we should be disciplining our minds to do. It comes by disciplining ourselves to read the text of Scripture over and over and over until we can see the words in our mind's eye.

I want to state as clearly as possible that I do not believe that Bible software or mobile Bible apps are an evil thing, or a bad thing, or even necessarily a misused thing. As I said, I use them daily and I thank the Lord for the men and women who have spent countless hours tagging the biblical texts and creating code and datatypes that allow me to do my research in a more efficient way then previous generations ever would have imagined. They are a valuable tool in my expositor's toolbox, just as the bound concordance, lexicon and Bible dictionaries were to expositors a few decades ago.

All I am saying is that I know that if I am going to see the Word of God effectively hidden in my heart in any way like it was in Dr. Walvoord's, or the great cloud of those who internalized the Word in like manner, I must not allow myself to give in to the temptation to let my pursuit of that life-giving, sanctifying Word degenerate into just another search-box inquiry. Rather, I must purposefully and prayerfully learn the Scriptures, hide them in my heart, and feed upon them daily so that I can recall them in order to be taught, reproved, corrected and trained in righteousness, fully equipped for every good work.