Jonathan Edwards:
An eminent saint is not apt to think himself eminent in any thing; all his graces and experiences are ready to appear to him to be comparatively small; but especially his humility. There is nothing that appertains to Christian experience, and true piety, that is so much out of his sight as his humility. He is a thousand times more quick-sighted to discern his pride, than his humility: that he easily discerns, and is apt to take much notice of, but hardly discerns his humility. (Religious Affections, 334-35)Are you often aware of your own humility? Then you’re probably not humble.
Have you noticed your pride? Then you may be more humble than you realize.
Here are two signs of Christian maturity: a keen eye to discern your sins and blessed self-forgetfulness.
Father, make me humble. Make me love the Lord with all my heart and love my neighbor as myself. Give me that glorious paradox: the ability to see my sin and at the same time look away from myself. And when I am tempted to posture and position as the world does, remind me that the meek will inherit the earth.
"Come Ye Sinners" by Matthew Smith from Matthew Smith on Vimeo.
Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. Luke 23:34Lord Jesus, it’s the day in Holy Week we call “Good Friday.” I’ve always felt conflicted about calling the day of your crucifixion “good.” That there had to be a day when you, the God who made us for yourself, would be made sin for us is not good at all.
Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Matthew 28:46
On the other hand, that you so freely and fully gave yourself for us on the cross is never-to-be surpassed goodness. It is quintessential goodness, for out of the same heart came these two cries from the cross: “Father forgive them…”, and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The first required the second. The second secured the first. Together they buckle my knees in wonder, still my heart with peace, and loose my tongue for praise.
Jesus, how can we even begin to express the depth of gratitude, love and adoration we feel in response to your death for us on the cross? It’s like wanting to capture the glory of spring on a canvas, but with a palate of three colors and both of arms in a cast. It’s like having a passion to compose a great symphony, but knowing we’re just a kazoo players who don’t read music. It’s like desiring to cook you a great banquet, with only a microwave oven, a loaf of white bread and a can of cheese whiz. So like everything else we have to offer you, take our humble praise and purify it, magnify it and cause it to rise as a sweet aroma of worship.
No one could ever take your life from you and we could never find life apart from you. Because you were fully forsaken, we are forever forgiven. Because you exhausted God’s judgment against our foul sin, we now live by the gift of your perfect righteousness. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! So very Amen, we pray, in your all glorious, all gracious name.
From Stephen Altrogge's forthcoming book, The Greener Grass Conspiracy:Hebrews 3:13 says, “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Sin is an expert in propaganda. It skillfully crafts lies and half-truths. Our hearts are trying to deceive us into believing lies. Discontentment starts when we believe sinful lies—lies about God, lies about ourselves, lies about the world, and lies about others. If we’re going to defeat the sin of discontentment, we need to be able to spot its lies. We need to be able to recognize propaganda.
For starters, the following are some of the most common lies:
- God is withholding from me. If we don’t have something we desire, it’s not because God is withholding good from us. God didn’t spare his Son one stroke of misery. He won’t withhold any good thing from us.
- God owes me. The discontented man complains because he isn’t getting what God “owes” him. The contented man is astonished that God would bless him for doing his duty.
- If I get it, I’ll be happy. We won’t be fully satisfied when we get what we want. Because God loves us and wants us to find our satisfaction in him, he won’t allow us to be satisfied. To believe that we’ll finally be happy when we get what we want is a lie.
- I know what’s best for me. God is the one who restores our soul. Sometimes he restores us by giving us what we desire, and sometimes he restores us by withholding it. In either case we can be assured that God knows the best path for us and that he’ll lead us on that path.
Initially, Jesus asked the disciples “Who do people say that I am?” (Mark 8:27). In other words, “What are you guys hearing about me? What’s the word on the street?” They give three responses. “Some are convinced you’re John the Baptist. Others figure you’re Elijah. And then there are those who aren’t sure, but think you are one of the prophets.” That’s pretty impressive company. The crowds recognize Jesus to be a man who teaches the way of God, a leader who calls people back to God. They know he does miracles like Elijah, speaks with authority like the prophets, and has a following like John. Not too shabby. To call Jesus “one of the prophets” after four hundred silent years following Malachi is quite a statement.
And yet the crowds are dead wrong. Jesus is not one of; he is the One. Jesus is not a pointer like John, Elijah, or one of the prophets. He is the point. It sounds very lofty to call Jesus a prophet, or a popular teacher, or a wonder worker, or a good man, or a brilliant example, or part of a long line of enlightened figures. But all of these descriptions miss the point. Because in all of them you are saying Jesus is one of (see v. 28). And if you say Jesus is only one of and not the One, you haven’t understood him. You don’t see who He really is. He is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16).
You may think you’re saying very complimentary things about Jesus when you call him one of the prophets, a great man, an enlightened teacher, but you’re not actually complimenting him at all. It’s like saying the sun is one of many lights we use to illuminate the house, or that Michael Jordan used to throw the ball around for the Bulls, or that Barack Obama owns a home in Chicago. Those statements are all true. But they are also all false because they don’t say enough. The sun is the star in our solar system. Michael Jordan is the best basketball player ever. Barack Obama is the President of the United States. If you don’t say those things you’re not saying what really matters. By not saying what is most important and most unique you’re actually saying something very misleading.
When it comes to identifying Jesus, partial truths that miss the biggest truth end up telling a lie. True, Jesus is a prophet (Mark 6:4; Deut. 18:18). But he is not like John the Baptist. He is not another Elijah. He is not merely one of the prophets. He is the one to which all the other prophets were pointing. So to call him a prophet and nothing but a prophet is to misunderstand at the profoundest level who this man is. If you were to describe your wife as “a beautiful woman among many beautiful women in the world,” or “an individual I deeply respect” or “the last, in a long line of women I have loved” would your wife be pleased? Obviously not. You’ve damned her with faint praise. You’ve insulted her by demeaning her uniqueness and describing her in terms so much below what she deserves.
So away with all this nonsense that Jesus is like Mohammed or like the Buddha or like the Dali Lama or like Ghandi or like your saintly grandmother. He is not like anyone else. And so we will not pretend to be impressed when others call Jesus a good man or an enlightened figure or one of the prophets. He is not one of, He is the One.
Stephen Altrogge:Many times when we don’t get what we want, questions and accusations start to flit about our minds.–
“Why won’t God let me move up in my job? I’ve prayed and prayed and prayed for this. Doesn’t he want me to be happy? He could give me what I want in a second. Maybe he doesn’t love me. Maybe he’s not so good after all.”
The truth is, God will never withhold from us. The greatest, irrefutable proof of God’s generosity is Calvary. Look at the beloved Son, ridiculed by the masses, beaten beyond recognition, hanging upon a cross, slowly suffocating, dying for sinners like you and me. God gave up what was most precious to him so that he could save sinners who hated him. If God was willing to do that, won’t he also give us every good thing that we need? In Romans 8:32 Paul puts it this way: “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
Puritan pastor John Flavel says:
Surely if he [God] would not spare his own Son one stroke, one tear, one groan, one sigh, one circumstance of misery, it can never be imagined that ever he should, after this, deny or withhold from his people, for whose sakes all this was suffered, any mercies, any comforts, any privilege, spiritual or temporal, which is good for them.
If we don’t have something we desire, it’s not because God is withholding good from us. God didn’t spare his Son one stroke of misery. He won’t withhold any good thing from us.
I finished The Great Exchange by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington on my flight out to California yesterday. It's a magnificent treatment on the concept of the atonement throughout the bible and what it means that "he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21). What does it mean that we have an "imputed righteousness" from Christ? They deal with the basic concepts of the atonement, its foreshadowing in the Old Testament (a very fascinating part), and then walk through basically every New Testament book to detail what we learn about the atonement.Christ's atoning work as a free gift supplies the righteousness that is due from man as a creature made in the image of his Creator. What the first man, Adam, should have produced as was proper for a creature made in the image of God, God produced and supplied to fallen man -- the perfect sacrifice as our substitute met what was lacking in our righteousness. Since God possesses absolute righteousness as an innate attribute of who he is, and since man is required to produce this perfect righteousness but is in no way able to do so, only a God-man, uniting the two natures in one person, could provide this righteousness. Perfect righteousness, adequate to be accepted by God, becomes a human possibility only upon its being transferred to those who are united to the God-man by faith.~Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington, The Great Exchange: My Sin for His Righteousness (p. 84-85)
Upon receiving Christ and his righteousness by faith, a legal union between God and the regenerated sinner is formed, resulting in immediate, perfect, and permanent justification. The sinner's standing before the divine tribunal changes from guilty to declared righteous. Then, forever joined in a living union with him, the sinner begins the process of sanctification with its outward evidence of a changed heart as the sinner becomes who he is in Christ -- a new creation.
Justin Taylor Interview - Russell Moore, "Tempted and Tried" from Crossway on Vimeo.
There’s a story about a cave in Genesis 19, and that’s an appropriate setting. A cave is dark. It’s dank. It’s hazy. Out of the way. Isolated from sight and from community.
Perfect for the end of Lot’s story.
If you read Genesis 19 you’ll find a shocking story. Lot, having been mercifully saved from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, found himself hiding with his two daughters in a cave in the mountains. The girls looked around and realized there wasn’t anybody else about, and so took the preservance of their family line into their own hands. A lude tale of drunkenness and incest insued, and at the end of the day, Lot was both the grandfather and father to two boys. Scripture records their names:
“So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today” (Genesis 19:36-38).
It gets worse. The Bible tells us what became of these boys and their descendants.
Moab was the father of the Moabites who, according to Numbers 25, engaged in religious orgies during worship of their fertility god and were a snare to the people of Israel. Ben-Ammi, meanwhile, was the father of the Amonites. According to Amos 1, these people were so ferocious in warfare that they would cut open the bellies of pregnant women. What’s more, they worshiped the god Molech who required child sacrifice.
You’d be hard pressed to find anything good coming out of a cave.
And yet here, too, there is a place for the gospel.
Those Moabites? Those wicked and disobedient people, fathered from an incestuous relationship? The most famous Moabite in all history is Ruth. Who followed her mother-in-law to Israel. And met a man named Boaz. And then had a child named Obed. Who had a son named Jesse. Who had a boy named David. Who was the ancestor of Jesus Christ.
Yes, God knows how to bring good from the cave.
For that same descendant of David, and of Lot, spent some time in a cave Himself. And just when the story of the universe was at its darkest, completely devoid of hope, the busy and redemptive hand of the Lord was still at work.
Three days later, the Great Good came marching out of another cave. Again.
I don't have time to write a full review of this book, but I read David McIntyre's The Hidden Life of Prayer on my trip out to NYC on Monday, and it's a really powerful and helpful book on prayer.Private or secret prayer is the life-blood of the Christian. The great men and women of God down through the ages have testified to the effectiveness of this in their lives. Some like Martin Luther, have said that they could not survive a busy day without spending 2-3 hours alone with God.There were many little nuggets that said similar things I've always heard about prayer but in a way that made some things "click." The language can be a little difficult at times because of the time period it was written (McIntyre died in 1938), but the book is only 123 pages and I read the whole thing on the flight from Cincinnati to NYC. I wish I had time to outline the things I enjoyed about this book, but I probably won't as this week is pretty crazy with being on the road for work.
Drawing on the experiences of people like Luther, Spurgeon, Muller, Whitefield and Wesley, the author presses the case for a greater commitment to prayer.
His advice may not only transform your life, it could be a catalyst towards a change in the world around you.
