Men’s Campout!

~ pjwenzel ~ 1 Comment

As I mentioned in class two weeks ago, this year we’ll be holding our 4th annual men’s campout.  The preliminary details are below.  This is an amazing time of fun and fellowship that I highly recommend for any guy who enjoys shooting guns, grilling out, hiking, and playing a lot of cornhole.  Please RSVP to PJ Wenzel: pjwenzel@gmail.com

NOTE: the purpose of this event is both outreach and inreach.  So invite those who don’t come to our church as well as folks who you don’t know well but know would enjoy coming and meeting other guys.

Address: Tom Whatman’s Farm, 6650 Stoffer Rd., Bellville, OH 44813

Date: June 22nd and 23rd  – meet at Dublin Baptist Parking Lot at 1pm on the 22nd and you’ll be back in time for a late dinner with your family on the 23rd (Saturday).

What to bring: Bible, sleeping bag, tent (if you don’t have a tent I will put you in with someone else who has space), any guns you want to fire along with ammo

Cost: count on this being $25-35 per person.  I will have exact figures soon.

Lastly, look for updated to this page website.  I’m sure I’ll post updates as people ask questions and I solidify the itinerary.

PJW

Visual Theology: Reformed Theology

~ pjwenzel ~ Leave a comment

Pastor Tim Challies has continued his series of visual theology helps for those looking to understand more about theology while appreciating a creative approach.  I really enjoy these, and think they are helpful.  For those who don’t know what “reformed theology” is, take a look at his link, or read RC Sproul’s book on it here.

Enjoy!

PJW

Study Notes 4-29-12 covering John 4:16-24

~ pjwenzel ~ Leave a comment

John 4:16-24

4:16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”

  • D.A. Carson remarks, “The change of subject, though abrupt, is not artificial. The Samaritan woman has already failed to grasp who Jesus is, and misconstrued the nature of the living water he was promising. By this turn in the dialogue, Jesus is indicating that she has also misunderstood the true dimensions of her own need, the real nature of her self-confessed thirst.”

4:17-19 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; [18] for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” [19] The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

  • Only a prophet, a man of God, could know these details of her life, thus, the woman immediately perceives that Jesus is more than just a wise man with a claim to “living water.”  This is a man who knows the very details of her life.  At this point in the discussion, the intensity must be so thick that it could be cut with a knife.  The woman has just had her life details (and sin) laid out before her from a total stranger! Carson says, “by displaying his knowledge of her morally messy past Jesus is exhibiting his own more-than-human knowledge  – a point the woman understands. Nevertheless, his remark is not designed to be merely self-reveling: rather it is designed to help the woman come to terms with the nature of the gift he is offering.”
  • The deity and humanity of Christ is clearly revealed in this chapter in such a splendid way that we can really come to no other conclusion than that this man was both fully God and fully man.  He’s tired from His journey, yet He planned the journey in advance and knew exactly when to leave. He’s offering the woman eternal life and knows her life details, and yet he appear to be communicating with her as just a man – there is no angelic radiance or voice from heaven telling her that He is more than just a man from an auditory or visual perspective.
  • One thing that Carson points out that must be examined is the way in which Jesus interacts with people.  He says, “Jesus commonly drives to the individual’s greatest sin, hopelessness, guilt, despair, need…Jesus exposes the whole truth, but in the gentlest possible way; he commends her for her formal truthfulness, while pointing out that she has had five husbands and the man with whom she is now sleeping is not her legal husband at all.”
  • Paul says that the entire world is a prisoner to sin (Galatians 3:22) and Jesus came to set these prisoners free (Luke 4:18)) – that is why He makes it such a priority to get to the heart of sin in these people’s lives.  He does the same with all those whom He calls to Himself.  As Ryle says, “We should mark…the absolute necessity of conviction of sin before a soul can be converted to God.”

4:20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”

  • Even though the Samaritans had built a temple in 400 BC on Mt. Gerizim, the Jews, led by John Hyrcanus, destroyed it around 120 BC.  So knowing this, its easy to see why there was a rift between the Jews and the Samaritans!
  • Amazing how she changes the topic here.  It is so “irrational” to do so (Piper).  It’s like she’s saying, “while we’re on the topic of my adulterous lifestyle, what do you think about the worship issue we’ve been dealing with here?”  It makes no sense.  She’s running away from the light (cf. 3:18-21) of the gospel.  Thomas Aquinas is right to say that no man seeks after God, we all seek after the benefits only God can give us while simultaneously running as fast as we can from Him.  And as Sproul notes, “we are, by nature, fugitives.”

4:21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.

  • This verse tells us a great deal about worship and the nature of how people had been thinking about worship up until this point in human history.  Paul articulates this shift in thinking when he said, “Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands” (Acts 7:48).  It is an amazing truth that we don’t have to go to a central location to worship God.  In fact, we are commanded to pray to God without ceasing (1 Thes. 5:17) and as Spurgeon points out, this command is immediately proceeded by a commanded to rejoice in the Lord.  We’ve talked about this in past weeks and I’ll come back to it again I’m sure.  It is the truth at the very heart of John Piper’s ministry and the at the heart of what drove the Westminster Divines to state that our entire time here on earth out to be “glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.”  Jesus is showing us that we can worship God and enjoy God anywhere in the world.  Like breathing and eating, for the Christian enjoying God is a normal part of life.  How are we to enjoy Him?  By praying without ceasing.  But entering into His presence as often as possible.  We ought to long to be in fellowship with God.
  • The point is that Jesus Christ was ushering in a shift in not only how people were to worship, but where they could worship.  It used to be that the presence of God would dwell in the temple in Jerusalem and a cloud of glory would emanate out from the holy of holies (2 Chron. 5:14).  It was an awesome spectacle to behold.  Jesus was ushering in a time when the temple of God would be our very bodies (1 Cor. 6:19) and that we could worship God wherever we are and that geography no longer plays a role in our worship. Perhaps no where is this more evident than in Acts 16:25 when we’re told that “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God.”
  • When we think about how people came to the temple before in the Old Testament, they had to be ceremonially clean and ready to come before the Lord.  Today I often hear legalistically minded Christians tell me that we need to dress up before we come to church so that we show God the respect due Him.  However, this statement both goes too far, and not far enough.  As we have seen above, we are not bound by any special place and dress code for God does not dwell in temples made by human hands, and so thinking that somehow dressing up gives him glory, we miss the point of just about every Biblical passage on this point since God told Samuel that “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1Sam.16:7).  As Ryle says, “Our Lord tells her (the Samaritan Woman) that true and acceptable worship depends not on the place in which it is offered, but on the state of the worshiper’s heart.”
  • But on the flip-side, we don’t go far enough by not realizing that our very bodies are temples of the Living God.  If this is true, how much more are we to respect the fact that He, the very God of God, the Holy One, dwells in this sanctuary?!   Therefore, let us leave behind any notion of legalism and ungodly thinking and realize that true consecration comes 7 days a week, not simply from 9-12 on a Sunday morning.

4:22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.

  • In case there was any confusion as to whether or not Jesus condoned the syncretistic religion of the Samaritans, those questions are put promptly to bed here.  Jesus claims a kind of exclusivity that drives the secular world to anger.

4:23-24 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. [24] God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

  • It is hard not to say too much about these two verses, for I can’t emphasize their importance enough.  One thing that stands out to me immediately is the nature and person of God.  In these verses we learn a little of His character, and His person.  For instance, we learn that God is a spirit.  This is crucial for our understanding of who God is – and Jesus uses His teaching of who God is, to make a rhetorical play on words to say that we must worship Him in spirit and in truth. And though there is a play on words, there is much more substance here than that.  What Jesus seems to be saying here, is that we can’t affectively worship the Father without first having the Spirit of God and having a right idea of who He is, and that is what He means by the Spirit and “truth.”
  • But this verse builds on what was mentioned earlier about where we can worship God.  Now we learn more about who can worship God, and it is closely tied to who can really enjoy God.  The unbeliever might well count their rosary over and over again, but they will never by that ritual, be entering into the presence of God.  They are not worshiping God in Spirit. And enjoying God is the farthest thing from their minds. In fact, prayer is a chore, a duty, a ritual, a habit; it’s a crutch to count those beads.  Its borderline superstition!  Contrast this with the believer who enters into worship in prayer with God because they are commanded to enjoy Him, and because they want the fellowship. It is as necessary to them as eating and breathing as I mentioned above.
  • Though, it must be said that for many believers we don’t understand or take full advantage of this joy.  J.C. Ryle says, “The Lord Jesus sis far more ready to hear than we are to pray, and far more ready to give favors than we are to ask them.”  Not only that, but even the Christian mind is given to outward empty forms, “We are all naturally included to make religion a mere matter of outward forms and ceremonies and to attach an excessive importance to our own particular manner of worshipping God.  We must beware of this spirit, and especially when we first begin to think seriously about our souls. The heart is the principal thing in all our approaches to God.  The most gorgeous cathedral service is offensive in God’s sight, if all is gone through coldly, heartlessly, and without grace.”
  • It is the privilege of believers and no others to enter into this communion with God because only they can enter into this communion.  Why?  Notice the two descriptive terms in Jesus’ statement.  He says we worship God in “spirit” and in “truth.”  Only the believer has the “Spirit” of God so only the believer can enter into worship in spirit.  Only the believer knows the “truth” about God and can worship Him without any polluting ideas of idolatry clouding their mind.  This point in crucial because the unbeliever may think they know something of God.  But like this woman at the well, they have no idea of who God really is.  Their worship would simply be idolatry.  This is why it is absolutely critical that we rid our minds of all false notions of who God is.  We must study His character, learn His ways, and learn to love what He loves and to hate what He hates.  If we enter into worship with a false understanding of who God is, we will ask for wrong things, we will not have the mind of Christ: we will be worshiping an idol created in our minds!

The Legacy of Chuck Colson

~ pjwenzel ~ Leave a comment

Legendary for his Prison Ministry, and his conversion after being jailed for his role in the Watergate Scandal, Chuck Colson did many a great thing for the cause of Jesus during his time on earth.  But as discerning Christians we must look at the full measure of a man as we seek to memorialize and not idolize him.  Pastor Tim Challies wrote an important blog posting today that I believe we should all read. 

The Legacy of Charles Colson

I don’t mean to be a curmudgeon and I don’t mean to be insensitive, truly. Perhaps there are rules that govern these things, and I am violating them, or maybe I am just missing some vital piece of information. I don’t know. But I have been to a wide variety of Christian blogs and news sites reading the obituaries and memorials and remembrances of Charles Colson and have been surprised to note that they are have been very nearly uniformly, unabashedly positive. 

I am not convinced that we are doing right here. I suppose I would rather wait a little while to say this, but then the opportunity will be gone. At least to my understanding, Colson’s legacy was both more and less than people are making it out to be. I didn’t really understand the man in all his inconsistencies and complexities while he lived—the combination of good and bad baffled me—and I certainly don’t understand him now that he has died.

Don’t hear me say that Colson was a complete villain, but do hear me when I say that he leaves behind a legacy that is far more multi-faceted, far more multi-dimensional, than most people have been saying. It is a legacy that includes some dark chapters, and not only prior to his conversion.

Charles Colson leaves behind a testimony of a man who encountered grace at his darkest hour. He leaves behind a legacy of a ministry that seeks to extend grace to those who are likewise in their darkest hour. He sought to teach Christians how to think—to describe and define a biblical worldview. And then he sought to lead in the application of that biblical worldview, and this is where things become hazy, where a positive legacy collides with a woeful one, where his work for the Lord encounters his work against the Lord’s church.

The fact is that as we remember this man, we remember someone who labored to strike a significant blow against the gospel, and who time and again called on the church to do the same. And this is what is absent in so many remembrances. He labored for good and positive causes, but he also labored for outright sinful causes.

Colson was a leader, a co-founder, of Evangelicals and Catholics Together, one of the efforts that must stand as part of his defining legacy. At heart, ECT made the Reformation a mistake or an over-reaction and sought to draw Protestant and Catholic back together. It made little of the gospel, suggesting that there was no unbridgeable difference between the gospel of the Reformation and the gospel of Roman Catholicism. This had potential to do terrible damage to the church and its gospel witness. Remarkably, the obituary at The Gospel Coalition mentions ECT along with Colson’s other accomplishments as if it is substantially the same as Prison Fellowship. Most others do not mention it at all.

R.C. Sproul wrote two powerful and important rebuttals to ECT, Faith Alone and Getting the Gospel Right, books that are still well worth a read today. Time may have dulled our collective memories, but in its time ECT was a major issue and a major threat to church unity and gospel centrality. It was just the kind of threat that merited and demanded the treatises Sproul provided—ones that sounded a warning and drew attention to a danger that so many people were ignoring.

Then there was the more recent Manhattan Declaration, another effort to form a wide ecumenism. This Declaration addressed critical issues of our day: the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife and the rights of conscience and religious liberty. But it did so as Evangelicals and Catholics and Orthodox together under the banner of a common gospel. John MacArthur said it well in an article detailing why he would not sign his name to it:

It assumes from the start that all signatories are fellow Christians whose only differences have to do with the fact that they represent distinct ‘communities.’ Points of disagreement are tacitly acknowledged but are described as ‘historic lines of ecclesial differences’ rather than fundamental conflicts of doctrine and conviction with regard to the gospel and the question of which teachings are essential to authentic Christianity. … [It would] relegate the very essence of gospel truth to the level of a secondary issue. That is the wrong way—perhaps the very worst way—for evangelicals to address the moral and political crises of our time.

Sproul likewise declined to put his name to the Declaration. At heart it downplayed the gospel to a lowest common denominator. It used the word gospel as if it applied in the same way to Roman Catholics and Protestants, something very consistent with what Colson held and taught throughout his years of being a leader within Evangelicalism.

In these ways and others, Colson undermined the gospel. He may not have set out to do this and he may not even have understood that he was doing this, but it remains the fact of the matter. ECT and The Manhattan Declaration stand as two prominent and public testaments to his willingness to tamper with the purity of the gospel. These things really happened and they both had the potential to be very, very destructive to the church because each one called into question the gospel, the very heart of the Christian faith.

It is not wrong of us to mention these negative aspects of his legacy along side the good. They are nothing more, nothing less, than what is true of the man. As Christians we ought to be able to deal with a mixed legacy, one of success and failure, one that is as complex and inconsistent as so many men are. Our worldview ought to be big enough to deal with such things. To portray Charles Colson as all villain is unfair to the man; to portray him as all spiritual giant is unfair to the church. Let’s not be afraid to call it as it is.

 

‘One Night with the King’ – Movie on Esther

~ pjwenzel ~ Leave a comment

I mentioned on Sunday how the movie ‘One Night with the King‘ was one of my favorite Bible-time movies.  You can watch the entire movie for free online at Hulu – here’s the link.  

The movie begins with the disobedience of Saul (1 Samuel 15:9-11) and how that allowed the Agagites to continue living, and how that eventually produced a problem for Esther.

The movie has a few violent scenes, some more mature themes (as does the book of Esther itself), but it is remarkably clean and a terrific film.

 

Study Notes 4-22-12

~ pjwenzel ~ Leave a comment

4:1-2 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John [2] (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples),

  • I mentioned before that I think Jesus was probably not doing the baptizing Himself because people might have been prone to claim they had a “better” baptism if they were baptized by Him instead of another disciple/apostle.
  • I get into this a little bit below, but we are forced right away to ask ourselves “why” did Jesus find it necessary to leave Judea?  At first glance it might be easy to assume He was simply being reactionary to the Pharisees.  That He wanted to leave because of them.  Why?  Was it a reaction, or was it an action planned out ahead of time with the Pharisees’ new knowledge simply acting as the catalyst for the unfolding of divine providence?  I think the latter is a better explanation.  There are several reasons as to why He may have left that we’ll explore below, but right now we must settle it in our minds that He didn’t leave simply out of reaction to the whims and actions of men.  Jesus was in complete control of His life.  All things had been given into His hands (3:35).

4:3-4 he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. [4] And he had to pass through Samaria.

  • The way from Judea up to Galilee would have made it geographically necessary/expedient for Jesus to pass this way, but as the ESV study notes indicate, there might be a double meaning in the wording:  “the words may also indicate that Jesus’ itinerary was subject to the sovereign and providential plan of God (“had to” translates Gk. dei, “to be necessary,” which always indicates divine necessity or requirement elsewhere in John: 3:7, 14, 30; 9:4; 10:16; 12:34; 20:9). Through Samaria was the usual route taken by travelers from Judea to Galilee, though strict Jews, in order to avoid defilement, could bypass Samaria by opting for a longer route that involved crossing the Jordan and traveling on the east side.”
  • The Assyrians had resettled Samaria after the northern kingdom of Israel had fallen (2 Kings 17:6-8 ESV). These Samarians were odious to the people of Israel and the history obviously went as deep as the hatred they held for them.
  • D.A. Carson gives more background: After the Assyrians captured Samaria [the capital of the Northern kingdom of Israel] in 722–21 BC, they deported all the Israelites of substance and settled the land with foreigners, who intermarried with the surviving Israelites and adhered to some form of their ancient religion (2 Kings 17–18). After the exile [of the Southern kingdom in Babylon], Jews, returning to their homeland… viewed the Samaritans not only as the children of political rebels but as racial half- breeds whose religion was tainted by various unacceptable elements…. About 400 BC the Samarians erected a rival temple on Mount Gerizim. (D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, 216)
  • Now, to address the “had to” comment here, I thought it would be easy enough to explain it away geographically, but I don’t think that’s entirely what is going on here.  John Piper says he can think of at least four reasons for Jesus “having to” go through Samaria.  The best explanation matches up with Boice’s thinking as well.  Piper says this: Jesus may have felt a divine impulse to go to Galilee by way of Samaria because God planned a divine appointment there. Do the words “had to” in verse 4 only mean it was geographically shorter? Verse 4: “And he had to pass through Samaria.” It was possible to go to Galilee in a roundabout way, which some Jews did because they thought the Samaritans were unclean. But John said that Jesus “ had to pass through Samaria.” Because he had an appointment to keep?

4:5-6 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. [6] Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

  • A few contextual notes here might be helpful.  First, the Jewish day started at 6am, so the “sixth hour” would have been about noon.  Also, according to the ESV study notes, the well was located “at a juncture of major ancient roads and near the traditional sacred site of Joseph’s tomb.”
  • The fact that Jesus was so wearied from His journey really serves as a reminder to us of His humanity.  He got tired as we get tired.  He thirsted as we thirst.  When I think about the fact that He is in heaven right now hearing my prayers and understands fully what it means to feel as I feel, that is a very comforting fact for me to rest upon.  We have a God who knows us not simply because He made us, but because He experienced life as we experience it.  Astounding.
  • One thing that James Boice challenges us with is to ask whether or not we have ever “become hot or uncomfortable trying to communicate the gospel to others.”  It’s a probing question that we all need to ask ourselves.

4:7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” [8] (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) [9] The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

  • James Boice has a beautiful insight into the contrasts between the story we find here with the Samaritan woman and the one we find earlier with Nicodemus.  He talks about how they are exact opposites in so many ways, and yet the points of the stories are the same. “If Nicodemus is an example of the truth that no one can rise so high as to be above salvation, the woman is an example of the truth that none can sink too low.”
  • Piper explains the relationship here by saying, “So we have ethnic, racial, and religious issues here that made Jews feel disdain for Samaritans. They were ceremonially unclean. They were racially impure. They were religiously heretical. And therefore they were avoided. Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. But more literally it says, Jews don’t “use together” with Samaritans. You can’t be asking me to use the same bucket. That isn’t done.”

4:10-11 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” [11] The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?

  • It really jumps out to me what Jesus says here about “if you knew who it is that is saying to you…”  If indeed!  How many others made the mistake of missing whom this man was!
  • She seemed to have taken Jesus’ words literally to the point of misunderstanding His point about the kind of water to which He was referring.  Boice points out that Nicodemus also missed the spiritual reference when Jesus told him he had to be “born again.”  Just like Nicodemus, she’s having difficulty discerning the spiritual things because she’s not spiritual herself (1 Cor. 2:14).
  • Boice explains what the woman would have been thinking perhaps, “In Jewish speech the phrase, ‘living water’ meant water that as flowing, like water in a river or stream, as opposed to water that was stagnant, as in a cistern or well. Living water was considered to be better. Therefore, when Jesus said that he could give her ‘living water’ the woman quite naturally thought of a stream. She wanted to know where Jesus had found it. From the tone of her remarks it is evident that she even thought his claim a bit blasphemous, for it was a claim to have done something greater than her ancestor Jacob had been able to do (dig the well).”

There are many Old Testament passages that a spiritual person of the day might have thought of as they listened to Jesus’ words, but this woman was not spiritual as I mention above.

  • Jeremiah 2:13 says, “for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
  • Revelation 7:17 says, “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
  • Isaiah 12:3 says, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.”

4:12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

  • Are you greater?  Yes, Christ is greater, though, once again, He doesn’t answer the woman’s question directly.  He doesn’t give answers to silly questions, but instead answers the question of her heart instead of the mumbling of her mouth.
  • As Boice said in his commentary, “Jesus was claiming to be the One who alone can satisfy human longing…You may try to fill your life with the things of this world…but though these will satisfy for a time, they will not do so permanently.  I have often said that they are like a Chinese dinner. They will fill you up well, but two or three hours later you will be hunger again. Only Jesus Christ is able to satisfy you fully.”

4:13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, [14] but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

  • Here the fact that He was making an analogy is made plane to the woman.  There are some parallels here between the principle of satisfaction and the joy we saw John the Baptist express at the end of chapter three.  Christ gives us life that will satisfy us eternally.  What He gives us matches His divine nature.  He is eternal, the great gifts He gives are eternal. Boice says, “The woman had come to a well.  Jesus has invited her to a spring.”
  • Kostenberger cites Beale and paraphrases that, “Jesus inaugurated the age of God’s abundance. Jesus’ offer of living water signals the reversal of the curse and the barrenness that are characteristic of the old fallen world.”  I love this thought because it expresses the anticipation of Jesus’ arrival on the scene, and the meaning of His breaking into human history to provide a way of life that is more than just legalistic shadows and laws.  It is substance, and complete fulfillment.  It is living and eternal water; it is eternal life.

4:15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

  • The woman here now responds how we ought to all respond!  GIVE ME THE WATER! Why?  So she wouldn’t have to “come here and draw water.”  And because, importantly, she probably felt a need for something (the “God-sized” hole in her life as some have termed it) to fulfill her.  She wasn’t being fulfilled in anything else.
  • Boice is right to cite Augustine’s famous opening to his ‘Confessions’ which says, “thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.”

 

How to we teach this to our children? Example: Today we learned about how the love and compassion of Christ extends to the least of all men and women.  We talked about how Jesus showed His love by deliberately choosing to talk to the lowest, dirtiest, and most sinful people.  Just like us, these people were sinful and without hope until Jesus changed all that.  Jesus takes our hopeless condition and gives us “living water” which is eternal life.

 

Getting to the Heart of Parenting: Ted Tripp

~ pjwenzel ~ Leave a comment

This weekend Kate and I went to a homeschool convention in Cincinnati, Ohio and heard from many good speakers.  The topics ranged from teaching creation to logic, to teaching latin, but probably my favorite lecture was from Ted Tripp on addressing obedience issues from a heart perspective.

In case you don’t know who Ted Tripp is, you can find his seminal book on child rearing here, and learn more about him and his ministry here.

A short outline from my notes of what he said, this isn’t the thing in its entirety, but sums up some of the key points he was making:

The heart sets the course of life – Prov. 4:23

“All hopes and desires are all coming out of the heart.  It is the seat of emotions and desires.  Many things we think of as cognitive activities are activities the bible says are from the ‘heart’. It’s possible to setup idols in our hearts and still inquire of God.  So even though people participate in the outward structure of religion they are still idol worshiping in their hearts.  God will not disclose himself to those who are idolatrous.  Ezekiel 14:3-4”

1 John 5:21 says ‘dear children keep yourself from idols’ and John is addressing the most important question for parents. Does something or someone else have control of my child’s heart other than Jesus Christ?   Anything that rules the heart is an idol.  What is driving them?  What is capturing their attention?”

Much time in parenting is wasted in trying to remove bad from and replace it with good fruit that is completely alien to the root system of the tree instead of dealing with the root system of the tree: Idolatry.”

(Therefore, we) should look at our lives and see if there are functional idols (Fear of man, pride, image, others approval).”

Look at what our heart desires.  Where is our treasure?  Matthew 6:19 says everyone has a treasure.  Every child has a treasure.  Whatever that treasurer is will own them. It will own their hearts.  Whatever they treasurer will shape their choices and control their behavior.”

There are three kinds of desires.  The desires of the flesh.  (This is from Romans 13)

1. Pleasure seeking (seeks a rush etc)
2. Sensual passions
3. Relationship cravings

“So what rules me? What rules my child?  This is the Lordship question. The world Is always inviting us to desire what it has to offer and put ourselves under its lordship.”

Behavioral sins are always motivated by these internal things (the sin from within).  Jesus focuses on the heart and not the outward behavior (murder in our hearts, adultery in our hearts).  Mark 7:20-23 This is true when he talks about what comes out of a man is what defiles him. Translation: what comes out of a child is what defiles them.  This is a heart issue.  We see this in the greediness, envy, slander, malice, deceit, etc.  ‘From the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks'”

We hang fruit on the tree instead of concerning ourselves with the root system.  We do this by shaming them, heaping guilt on them, threatening them etc.  All of these ways are just ways of manipulating their behavior.  But once you remove those external motivations the fruit rots because it’s not motivated by the life giving roots of the tree.  We are offering our children a false basis of ethics.  We are training the heart in a wrong way.  The real problem isn’t being addressed.  We are manipulating them with the fear or man, pride of life etc. and this doesn’t incorporate he gospel or make it central.  Lastly, it shows the idols of our own hearts: control, pride, etc.

So what are our motivations as parents?  Is it idolatry or a God-centered desire to please and glorify Him?

We need to make the gospel the center in all of our teaching and parenting.  If we don’t then we make hypocrisy the center of our lives because we are sinners as well.
Identify them in their struggle (as Christ identified with us) and bring them to Christ and the cross.  

J.C. Ryle Bio and Best Quotes on Sin

~ pjwenzel ~ Leave a comment

I mentioned in class last week that I’ve been reading J.C. Ryle’s famous work ‘Holiness’, and I thought you might enjoy a few of his best quotes here and there as I make progress through the book.

To learn more about J.C. Ryle, you can find more quotes from him here at a website devoted to sharing these gems with us.

Ryle on Sin

“Wrong views about holiness are generally traceable to wrong views about human corruption.”

“…a right knowledge of sin lies at the root of all saving Christianity.”

“Dim or indistinct views of sin are the origin of most of the errors, heresies and false doctrines of the present day.”

“…the sinfulness of man does not begin from without, but from within.”

“It is a family disease, which we all inherit from our first parents, Adam and Eve.”

“The fairest babe, that has entered life this year and become the sunbeam of a family, is not, as its mother perhaps fondly calls it, a little ‘angel’, or a little ‘innocent’, but a little ‘sinner’. Alas! As it lies smiling and crowing in its cradle, that little creature carries in its heart the seeds of every kind of wickedness!”

“…even after we are born again, renewed, washed, sanctified, justified, and made living members of Christ, these roots remain alive in the bottom of our hearts and, like the leprosy in the walls of the house, we never get rid of them until the earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved.”

“I do not think, in the nature of things, that mortal man can at all realize the exceeding sinfulness of the sin in the sight of that holy and perfect One with whom we have to do.”

“And man, fallen man, I believe, can have no just idea what a vile thing sin is in the sight of that God whose handiwork is absolutely perfect – perfect whether we look through telescope or microscope; perfect in the formation of a mighty planet like Jupiter, with his satellites, keeping time to a second as he rolls round the sun; perfect in the formation of the smallest insect that crawls over a foot of ground.”

“Terribly black must that guilt be for which nothing but the blood of the Son of God could make satisfaction.”

“…men try to cheat themselves into the belief that sin is not quite so sinful as God says it is, and that they are not so bad as they really are. You may see it in the tendency even of believers to indulge their children in questionable practices, and to blind their own eyes to the inevitable result of the love of money, of tampering with temptation and sanctioning a low standard of family religion. I fear we do not sufficiently realize the extreme subtlety of the soul’s disease. We are too apt to forget that temptation to sin will rarely present itself to us in its true colors, say, ‘I am your deadly enemy and I want to ruin you for ever in hell.’”

“Sin rarely seems sin at its first beginnings.”

“…the holiest saint is in himself a miserable sinner and a debtor to mercy and grace to the last moment of his existence!”

“…when we pray, how are our affections many times distracted! How little reverence do we show unto the grand majesty of God unto whom we speak!”

“For my part I am persuaded the more light we have, the more we see our own sinfulness; the nearer we get to heaven, the more we are clothed with humility.”

“Though sin has abounded, grace has much more abounded.”

“People will never set their faces decidedly toward heaven and live like pilgrims, until they really feel that they are in danger of hell.”

“Those whom the Spirit draws to Jesus are those whom the Spirit has convinced of sin. Without thorough conviction of sin, men may seem to come to Jesus and follow Him for a season, but they will soon fall away and return to the world.”

“We have too often been content with zeal for orthodoxy and have neglected the sober realities of daily practical godliness.”

“The cure for evangelical churchmen, I am convinced, is to be found in the clearer apprehension of the nature and sinfulness of sin.  We need not go back to Egypt, and borrow semi-Romish practices in order to revive our spiritual life. We need not restore the confessional, or return to the monasticism or asceticism. Nothing of the kind!  We must simply repent and do our first works.”

“I am convinced that the first step towards attaining a higher standard of holiness is to realize more fully the amazing sinfulness of sin.”

Study Notes 4-15-12

~ pjwenzel ~ Leave a comment

3:31 He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all.

John MacArthur really lays out convincingly that this section of scripture is all about the preeminence of Christ.  He says that there are 4 or 5 different ways in which the scripture shows this, and I’m going to create sub-headings here for each one since it was so good, and I will write my own thoughts underneath his sub-headings.

Christ is declaring to us the absolute authority and singularity with which He reigns.  If you are a sinner, lost without Christ, this is a terrifying truth.  If you are a Christian, held closely to the bosom of Christ, this is a magnificent truth, it is a beautiful truth, for He is your sovereign.  He is sovereign, He is sufficient, and He is supreme.  As Abraham Kuyper once famously said, “Oh, no single piece of our mental world is to be hermetically sealed off from the rest, and there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

Now onto the first heading…

First: Christ had a Heavenly Origin

  • His claim to be divine is at the essence of His supremacy.  If He is divine, then His words have a force behind them that ordinary men’s words would not have.
  • If you are to tell someone you’re above all, it indicates that you have more authority than anyone else.  This is the kind of statement that causes some secularists to call Christ an “ego-maniac” and the like.  And surely He would be, if He did not have the right to claim the things He did about Himself.  Similarly, these are the kinds of statements that cause us to deal with what kind of man Jesus was.  Josh McDowell, the famous Atheist turned Christian-apologist, said that we must all deal with Jesus in some way and that we end up either having to call Him “liar, lunatic, or Lord.”
  • This is something that every non-believer must be confronted with, and it’s the same question that Jesus put to Peter “who do you say I am?”  Your response to that question will reveal whether or not you will spend eternal life with Christ or not.

3:32 He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony.

Second: Christ Knew the Truth First Hand

  • Being divine, and having come from heaven, He would have heard God’s words first hand.  Being both God and man, He understood the will of God for mankind perfectly.  He was able to testify to God’s words with perfect accuracy because He was in the presence of God, but also because He was/is God!
  • When we start to think about Christ “hearing” testimony, we quickly begin to picture in our minds the conversation between members of the Trinity from before the world was created.  We don’t exactly know how they communicate one to another since they all have the same mind.  These are the kinds of things that men cannot know; they are mysteries fall too deep for us to plum.  But Christ realizes this, so He speaks in ways that He knows we’ll comprehend, and this is why He was a great “rabbi” because He could communicate the heavenly things so well, and yet the heavenly things were so wonderful that many in His day didn’t have a clue what He was talking about, and we’re still unpacking them today.

3:33 Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true.

Third: Christ’s Testimony Always Agreed with God

  • Naturally, if Christ is God, then He will always agree with what God has to say because He is agreeing with Himself. Though it is difficult for us to grasp the complexity of the trinity, the doctrine of the trinity is well established in these verses. All three forms of the Godhead are mentioned in this section.  Each member of the Godhead is mentioned as unique, and yet each one is mentioned as part of the One whole true God.
  • As to the text, we see that John is presenting us with a reality, and that reality is that if we accept the testimony of Jesus, then we must necessarily accept the premise that what God says is true, and therefore whatever Jesus says is true.  Once we agree (“set our seal to”) that God is the very essence of truth, we necessarily have a basis for putting our trust in the testimony of His Son.

3:34 For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.

Fourth: Christ Experienced the Power of the Holy Spirit Without Limit

  • Because Jesus is divine, He was filled with the Spirit during His time on earth – and not just a little power of the Spirit, but power “without measure.”  This is an incredible thing to think on.  I have no doubt that the Spirit of God was working in compliment to His own deity to perform many of the miracles that He performed on earth.  I have no idea how this worked, but we read that it happened, and we know that it happened, and we know that Christ had the Spirit without limit.
  • As Boice points out, some have erroneously thought this passage means that God gives the Spirit to believers without measure, but that is obviously not the case as our own experience bears witness.  It is also preposterous to think that mere humans without the nature of divinity (as Christ had) could possible contain the fullness of the Spirit.  If this were the case, we would see miracle after miracle.  Lastly, we know it is not the case because we are such sinful creatures that the Spirit of God, while striving with us, is often ignored by our disobedience.  We do not tap into the power of the Spirit nearly as much as one would expect who had the full and unlimited power of the Spirit “without measure.”

3:35-36 The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. [36] Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Fifth: Christ Received all Authority from the Father

  • If Jesus is divine, as we have reasoned from above, then it means that everything He has to say is something we need to be paying attention to.  He has all authority.  By way of analogy, it reminds me of when I was growing up and my parents would go out for the evening, leaving us with a babysitter.  The babysitter was not (in our view) endowed with all of the authority that our parents had.  Though she may have been acting as a sort of regent of my parent’s authority, I certainly didn’t take her word as having the same power as my parent’s word.  My parents were the supreme authority.  And by way of extension to this analogy, if my mom gave me an order, and testified to me that my father was in agreement with her on this matter, I certainly believed her.  Why?  Because my parents were a united front.  Anything my mom said my dad agreed upon and vise versa.  They had the same mind, and there was no disunity between them.
  • So it is with the authority of Christ – and so it ought to be with us by way of extension.  That is to say that we are co-regents with Christ on this planet.  We reign with Him.  Paul says that we have the mind of Christ, and that is because we have the Spirit of Christ who is the one giving us the thoughts of the mind of Christ.  Furthermore, we are being conformed into the image of Christ. Now, we don’t perfectly represent the mind and authority of Christ, just as my babysitter didn’t perfectly represent my parents.  I remember a few times when babysitters did really foolish things and said foolish things that my parents would never have approved of.
  • In verse 36 John tells us that whoever believes in Christ will reap eternal life.  There is a connection here between obedience and belief, and disobedience and wrath.  Note that it isn’t as though our actions reap a reward immediately upon their execution.  That is to say that the word “remains” indicates that we are already going to incur the wrath of God – it is the de-facto state of affairs for humanity until we do something about it (believe in Christ).
  • Lastly, it’s important to remember that we’re talking life and death here.  The Bible is a book that deals with the most difficult matters human beings have to deal with in life. When we read about what Christ said, it isn’t the story of a man who wasted His words talking about things that were fleeting.  So as a consequence, when we study the Bible we end up confronting these “ultimate” issues.  And if we read the gospels, this is especially true.

A Few Questions to ask ourselves:

  1. If Christ is supreme over my life, am I striving toward pleasing Him with my life?
  2. If Christ is supreme over all humanity, am I striving to present my family to Him as ones cleansed by the Word of God?
  3. If I believe that this man Jesus’ message is truly from God, what steps am I taking to obey it?

How do we teach this to our children? Here’s an example: Today we talked about Jesus and about His nature – who He is as a person and how He learned everything He knew from God the Father before He even came to earth.  Because His message was from God, and because God is completely truthful in everything He says and does, that means that Jesus’ message to us is completely truthful, which means that we need to pay very close attention to what we learn in the Bible about Jesus (Heb. 2:1) and what He says.