Lon Allison's article "A GPS for Global Mission" from Lausanne World Pulse sums up well the current questions and issues relevant to the global changes underway in the church. At this stage, I think questions are more helpful than anything. Here are four that Dr. Allison raises,

1. Since the demographic shift to the Global South is at hand, how do Western mission agencies and churches respond?
2. Resources, both financial and human, have, in general, not shifted. When should they? More importantly, how should they?
3. How does the Church in the West welcome missionaries from the Global South and East to re-evangelize our continents?
4. What role is there for ongoing mission to the Global South and East from the West?

These ought to keep us thinking for quite some time. They will be key in the discussion that takes place at the 2010 Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, South Africa.

Please pray for John Piper who will be speaking at the event and for the Desiring God team who will be traveling there next year.

Missionary to India, William Carey, once exhorted a Baptist gathering in England by saying, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” I love that quote.

But we must heed the Bible’s warning through Simon the Magician: if we attempt great things so that others will see us as great, we are in grave spiritual peril.

After Stephen had been brutally stoned to death, intense persecution broke out against the Christians in Jerusalem. Many were driven off to the towns and villages of Judea and Samaria.

Philip, Stephen’s co-servant to the Hellenistic widows, landed in a Samaritan town and preached and performed signs and wonders there. Large numbers of Samaritans professed faith and were baptized. And Simon was one of them.

Simon was a local celebrity, a magician of sorts. He had mesmerized the locals with his arts. And they had given him the title The Great Power of God. And he loved it. He basked in his reputation and fed off the admiration and respect he received.

But when Philip arrived, the game changed. Simon watched with covetous awe as the real, great power of God flowed through Philip; a power that far out-classed him.  

Then Peter and John showed up from Jerusalem. And when they prayed, people were filled with the Holy Spirit. This drew even more crowds. Everyone was talking about them. Everyone was mesmerized by them (or so it seemed to Simon).

No one was mesmerized by Simon anymore. He was a diminishing star. And like many who have once experienced the euphoric drug of other people’s adoration, he wanted that rush again.

If he could somehow get this Jesus power, then once again he could be great. Once again people would hold him in awe. He was willing to pay a high price for that drug.

So at a discreet moment, he approached Peter and John with a proposition. If they would let him in on the secret they possessed, if they would share their power with him, a small fortune in silver would be theirs and no one would ever know.

In a split second Simon knew he had miscalculated. Peter’s eyes seemed to burn right into his heart. And then Peter’s words seemed to slice him open:

May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. (Acts 8:20-23)

Simon cringed and said meekly, “Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said will come upon me.”

Peter’s words to Simon might have sounded harsh. But they were full of mercy. The love of self-glory is an extremely dangerous cancer of the soul and is spiritually fatal if not addressed. This cancer requires a straightforward, serious diagnosis. Both Peter and John had benefited from the Great Physician’s graciously severe rebukes. Maybe Simon would repent and be delivered.

The Bible does not tell us if he did. Early church literature suggests that Simon later became a heretic, which, if true, means he tragically ignored Peter’s warning.

But God does not want us to ignore the warning. This account is in the Bible so that we will remember that God’s power is not a commodity to be traded. It’s not a means for us to pursue our own greatness or wealth.

We can all relate to Simon. We are all are tempted to pursue our own glory, even in the work of the kingdom. When we recognize that familiar craving we need to deal severely with it. We must confess it (often to others, not just God), repent, and resist. Because, if left alone, it can develop into a spiritual cancer that can blind us to real glory, and may ultimately kill us.

So, let us expect great things from God and attempt great things for God. But let us take Peter’s advice and do so “by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 4:11).

After Jesus had fed both the 5,000 and the 4,000 with only a few loaves and fish, the disciples got in a boat without enough bread for themselves.

When they began to discuss their plight, Jesus said, “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand?” (Mark 8:17). What didn’t they understand?

They did not understand the meaning of the leftovers, namely, that Jesus will take care of them when they take care of others. Jesus said:

“When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?” And they said to him, “Seven.” And he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?”

Understand what? The leftovers.

The leftovers were for the servers. In fact the first time there were twelve servers and twelve basketfuls left over (Mark 6:43). The second time there seven basketfuls left over—the number of abundant completeness.

What didn’t they understand? That Jesus would take care of them. You can’t outgive Jesus. When you spend your life for others, your needs will be met.

In March, 2008, Graeme Goldsworthy delivered a lecture at Southern Baptist Theological seminary titled “Biblical Theology and its Pastoral Application.”

In it he gave one of the clearest statements of why the Reformation was needed and what the problem was in the way the Roman Catholic church had conceived of the gospel.

Both Catholicism and allegorical interpretation of Scripture involved the dehistoricizing of the Gospel. The Reformation rehistoricized both the Gospel and the Old Testament.

The prime focus recovered in the Reformation was the justification of the sinner on the basis of the objective, historic work of Christ for us.

Catholicism had reversed the vision so that the prime focus was on the work of Christ or his Spirit within us.

This meant the reversal of the relationship of sanctification to justification. Infused grace, beginning with baptismal regeneration, internalized the Gospel and made sanctification the basis of justification. This is an upside down Gospel.

I would add that this “upside down” gospel has not gone away—neither from Catholicism nor from Protestants who equate our faithfulness (sanctification) with faith (understood as a receiving of Christ’s faithfulness as the sole ground of God being 100% for us).

When the ground of justification moves from Christ outside of us to the work of Christ inside of us, the gospel (and the human soul) is imperiled. It is an upside down gospel.

David fell in 2 Samuel 11. He saw that Bathsheba was “very beautiful,” and he followed his lusts down the slope to adultery—and then even to having her husband killed.

But by 1 Kings 1, David is able to be attended to by Abishag the Shunammite, who the text also says was “very beautiful,” and yet “the king knew her not” (verse 4).

Maybe aging was a factor, but my guess is that there’s much more going on here than merely getting old. Such a change sure seems like God’s purifying hand in some regard—if not mostly. It’s a real-life example of victory.

There’s no need to be captive for the rest of your life, if God would so move. Be hopeful and lean on him for help.

While Ryan and his family prepared for long-term missions, he graciously gave his time as a volunteer for DG International Outreach. He brought tremendous skill and integrity to his work which bore wonderful fruit including this helpful post.

*               *               *

As our family prepares to move overseas, we sometimes encounter this question in one form or another: 

Is the Western missionary model still legitimate?” 

The question stems from a variety of concerns and perspectives, but our basic answer must be “yes.”  Even with the high cost of sending and recent shifts in the global Church, it is still strategic and fitting for Western missionaries to cross geographical and linguistic boundaries in the pursuit of new worshipers of Jesus. 

Here is why I think so:

1. God wants his name to be great in every place as well as among every people. 

Though missiologists in the past couple of decades have rightly emphasized the importance of unreached people groups ("nations") as the focus of the Great Commission, there are a number of texts which seem to require a geographic and not exclusively an ethnic focus (e.g. Malachi 1:11). 

The Great Commission cannot be fulfilled by only reaching the unreached who migrate to America, or Christ doesn’t receive the glory he deserves.

2.  There are still hundreds of remote peoples who haven’t heard the gospel.

Many Unreached peoples are unrepresented in reached cities. In these cases, someone is going to have to cross cultural and geographic boundaries to deliver the message in the flesh.

3. Too little money is given to missions, not too much. 

God has blessed this nation with an abundance of resources, yet a staggeringly low percentage of Christian spending is channeled toward missions, especially missions to the unreached. 

When God’s people here in America are biblically calibrated, there are plenty of resources both to continue sending workers from the West, and to support indigenous pastors and church planters.

4. In many cases, the Church in the West has something to offer. 

With a long history of Christian thought, abundant resources, and relative lack of persecution, the Western Church can often make a contribution in places where the Church is younger and less grounded. 

Just as it would be arrogant to think that we know it all and have no need of the global Church, it would be arrogant to sit on our wealth of resources, history, and doctrinal development rather than make it accessible to the world.

5. Crossing cultures is a fitting means for the message. 

When Christians from more privileged and dominant-language cultures (such as America), set aside their comforts, rights, and security in order to identify with and minister to people of lesser-privileged cultures and more obscure languages, something powerful and gospel-adorning is communicated. 

My father was the happiest man I have ever known. Not that he never grumbled (he was a golfer who lost a lot of balls). But he was rooted so firmly in the glory of God’s grace that nothing could keep him down for long.

He loved the promises of God. I just heard him say yesterday on an old recording, quoting William Carey, “The future is as bright as the promises of God.”

He really believed Romans 8:28. He prayed it and sang it and preached and lived in the joy of it.

And he led people to Christ in droves. Under God’s promises, he would have said this was the key to his joy. I asked him one time: What’s the key to joy. He answered without hesitation: Soul winning.

This is no mystery. It is more blessed to give than to receive. Freely you received. Freely give.

He and mother would sing in the front seat of the car while driving long distances with my sister and me in the back. “Isn’t He wonderful.” “Down at the Cross.” “Heavenly Sunshine.” “When We All Get to Heaven.” “Love Lifted Me.”

They were not performing. They were exulting.

I am still catching up.

What a legacy of Christ-exalting joy!

Thank you, Father, for my father.

In this year of John Calvin’s 500th birthday, I don’t know of a better place to read about his impact on America than Abraham Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism given at Princeton Seminary in October 1898. Kuyper was a pastor, a journalist, the founder of the Free University of Amsterdam, and Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

John Calvin and Martin Luther were the twin pillars of the Protestant Reformation. Why do fewer people speak of Luther’s culture-shaping impact on America, but for centuries Calvin has been seen in this light? Kuyper argues,

Luther’s starting-point was the . . . principle of justifying faith; while Calvin’s . . . lay in the general cosmological principle of the sovereignty of God. . . . [Hence] Lutheranism restricted itself to an exclusively ecclesiastical and theological character, while Calvinism put its impress in and outside the Church upon every department of human life.

It is the personal pervasiveness of God’s sovereignty that makes all the difference. This means that “the whole of a man’s life is to be lived as in the Divine Presence.” This “fundamental thought of Calvinism” shaped all of life. “It is from this mother-thought that the all-embracing life system of Calvinism sprang.”

For example, Calvin’s doctrine of “vocation” follows from the fact that every person, great and small, lives “in the Divine Presence.” God’s sovereign purposes govern the simplest occupation. He attends to everyone’s work. This yielded the Protestant work ethic. Huge benefits flow from a cultural shift in which all work is done earnestly and honestly with an eye to God.

Or consider how Calvinism breathed an impulse of freedom into modern history. The decisive principle was

the sovereignty of the Triune God over the whole Cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible. A primordial Sovereignty which eradicates in mankind . . . a threefold . . . supremacy, viz., (1) the sovereignty of the State; (2) the sovereignty in Society; and (3) the sovereignty in the Church.

God’s sovereign claim on every person and every sphere of society relativized all other claims. It began with the churches.

The sovereignty of Christ remains absolutely monarchical, but the government of the Church on earth becomes democratic to its bones and marrow. . . No church may exercise any dominion over another, but . . . all local churches are of equal rank.

This impulse of freedom spread to the political sphere. Calvin and his heirs had a strong predilection for republican government—and an aversion to monarchy. A benevolent dictatorship would be ideal in a sinless world. But in a sinful world, it brings the horrors of tyranny. “Call to mind . . . that Calvinism has captured and guaranteed to us our constitutional civil rights.”

We ask: Why then did Calvin endorse the death of Servetus for heresy? How was this part of his liberating impulse? Kuyper’s answer is helpful.

I not only deplore that . . . I unconditionally disapprove of it; yet not as if it were the expression of a special characteristic of Calvinism, but on the contrary as the fatal after-effect of a system, grey with age, which Calvinism found in existence, under which it had grown up, and from which it had not yet been able entirely to liberate itself.

A thousand years of abuses are not thrown off overnight. But the impulses of liberty, flowing from the decisive principle of the all-embracing sovereignty of God, proved to be unstoppable. “Calvinism has liberated Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England, and in the Pilgrim Fathers has provided the impulse to the prosperity of the United States.”

Kuyper closed his lectures with a claim that for many today sounds preposterous. Do not write him off. Get the book Lectures on Calvinism, and test these words, spoken to Americans in 1898.

In the rise of your university education . . .; in the decentralized . . . character of your local governments; . . . in your championship of free speech, and in your unlimited regard for freedom of conscience; in all this . . . it is demonstrable that you owe this to Calvinism and to Calvinism alone.

(Originally published in World Magazine)

Matt Chandler explains where “the de-churched” come from:

Laziness is not the alternative to living in your own strength. Paul talks about being strong in the strength of another.

• Ephesians 6:10: “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.”
• Colossians 1:29: “I toil [to present everyone mature in Christ], struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”
• 2 Timothy 2:1: “Be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”
• 1 Corinthians 15:10: “By the grace of God I am what I am.... I worked harder than any of [the other apostles], though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
• Romans 15:18: “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me.”

And it’s not only Paul who has this category for being strong in another’s strength. Peter and Hebrews join in as well.

• 1 Peter 4:11: “Whoever serves [do so] as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To whom belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
• Hebrews 13:20-21: “Now may the God of peace...equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight., through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”

Both Peter and Hebrews move directly from being strong in another’s strength to praising Jesus. When we forsake the sinful alternatives of passivity and mustering up our own strength, and instead pursue power in another’s power, that Other is mightily honored.

Born today 116 years ago, Dorothy Leigh Sayers was an English scholar, playwright, and writer of detective novels. She studied medieval literature at Oxford, and was one of the first women to graduate (in 1915) from that university.

She may be best known for the detective novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. Her  translation of Dante's The Divine Comedy is considered unmatched in quality and readability.

My wife is the expert on her fiction. I never read any. But in February, 1968 I read The Mind of the Maker, and felt the holy fires of being a verbal creator with a small c in the image of God the Maker.

Just as good was the collection of essays, Creed or Chaos? In particular one is worth the price of the book just for the title: “The Dogma is the Drama.”

She never tired of deriding the delicate soft-pedaling of serious doctrine. For her it was the wild strangeness of the Biblical worldview that made it blood-earnest, interesting, and worthy dying for.

The dogma is the drama—not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death — but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to a heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe. (Creed or Chaos?, 25 or Letters to a Diminished Church, 21)

Many of you are probably familiar with the devastating cyclone that hit Myanmar roughly a year ago. Tens of thousands were killed or displaced by this disaster. Many governments and Christian NGO’s responded with aid.

A lesser-known crisis is currently bringing hardship to the Burmese in a remote region of this country. Beginning in July 2008, a famine was caused by a phenomenon known as “mautam.”

Every 50 years flowering bamboo trees produce a fruit that nourishes the rat population, causing it to explode in numbers. These rats have been decimating farmlands, destroying crops such as rice and maize, the staple foods of the region. Now potentially 200,000 people face starvation. PBS has done an excellent documentary describing the situation while the Burmese government is doing little to help its own people.

Our friends at Food for the Hungry are currently working to provide relief assistance for the families in this region. God has given them great connections with local churches, but they are still working to raise more than $300,000 for this project.

The director of the program writes from the field,

[The victims] are struggling with God's good and sufficient help to do what they can to contribute to their own survival…These funds will go to the remote areas that are stranded in isolation. The volunteers look forward to the joy of delivering assistance where no others go. They will also take with them nutritional quick start gardening manuals with methods to rescue families under stress, and blessings from those who faithfully pray for them.

Desiring God is contributing to this relief effort and would like to encourage you to consider joining us. Food for the Hungry has a site you can visit in order to participate. Please pray for the Burmese, the country of Myanmar, and the workers in the field.

God gave him a message, and so he went around delivering it. “The word of God came to John”—we call him John the Baptist—and “he went into all the region around the Jordan [River], proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 3:2-3).

It seems John became popular pretty fast, but he wasn’t doing seeker-friendly.

He said...to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance." (Luke 3:7-8)

What did John do with his newfound platform? Two things:

1. He called for repentance (vv. 3, 7).
2. He pointed to Jesus—“He who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie” (Luke 3:16).

Calling for repentance and pointing to Jesus—a good model for what do with any platform.

I have tried to deal faithfully with curses in the Psalms, for example, in a sermon on Psalm 69.

Psalm 83, however, presents a different challenge. At the end there is a strange mixture of supplication and imprecation:

Fill their faces with shame,
that they may seek your name, O Lord.
Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever;
let them perish in disgrace, 
that they may know that you alone,
whose name is the Lord,
are the Most High over all the earth.
(Psalm 83:16-18)

Imprecation: The word “forever” in verse 17 is a prayer for utter and eternal defeat: “Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever.”

Supplication: But the phrase, “that they may seek your name, O Lord,” is a prayer for conversion: “Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord.”

It is true, as Kidner points out, that there is “fruitless seeking”. But it would be very strange that the psalmist would be praying for “fruitless seeking.” If that’s the prayer why not just pray that they not seek the Lord?

I think David Dickson is right:

If any of the enemies of God’s people belong to God’s election, the church’s prayer against them giveth way to their conversion, and seeketh no more than that the judgment should follow them, only till they acknowledge their sin, turn, and seek God.... For the rest of the wicked, irreconcilable adversaries, when shame of disappointment and temporal judgments are come upon them, the worst of all yet followeth, even everlasting perdition. (Commentary on the Psalms, Vol. 2, 67-68)

When I came home from running errands yesterday, I found a florist’s delivery on my back porch—rich, red long-stemmed roses. The gift card had no words, only numbers: 6-6-66.

Yesterday, 6-6-09, was the 43rd anniversary of the day I met Johnny Piper in the lounge of Fischer Hall at Wheaton College. God has brought us a long way since then.

When I got the flowers, Johnny was in Raleigh. Remembering the many times he’s told a favorite what-if story, I texted him: “Oh Johnny, they’re beautiful! Why did you?”

He responded: “It’s my duty”—which, of course, is a joke that always gets a laugh. (You can scroll to the bottom of this message to see the story I'm talking about.)

It gets a laugh in America, but some audiences elsewhere might not get the humor, according to a friend who lives in China. When she was hospitalized there a few years ago, a group of her students came to visit and brought gifts. She exclaimed, “How nice! You didn’t need to go to all this trouble.”

As with one cheerful voice, the young people responded, “Of course we did. It’s our duty.”

I leave for China today. It’s my pleasure.

I see two kinds of response to social Internet media like blogging, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and others.

One says: These media tend to shorten attention spans, weaken discursive reasoning, lure people away from Scripture and prayer, disembody relationships, feed the fires of narcissism, cater to the craving for attention, fill the world with drivel, shrink the soul’s capacity for greatness, and make us second-handers who comment on life when we ought to be living it. So boycott them and write books (not blogs) about the problem.

The other response says: Yes, there is truth in all of that, but...

Read the rest of the article.

The love of our own glory is the greatest competitor with God in our hearts. And sometimes we can cloak this idol in a pious disguise. In Matthew 21, Jesus unmasked such an idol with a single question.

It was the final week before Jesus’ day of judgment—the day he would stand before his Father’s bar of justice bearing the sins of all who ever had or would believe in him and in their place be crushed by the Father’s wrath.  

He no longer avoided the treacherous Jewish political and religious leaders. He openly confronted their errors and duplicity, pouring fuel on the fire of their fear and hatred of him.

As the Jewish leaders saw it, Jesus was out of control. He had been a growing problem for a couple of years. But Sunday, he had wreaked havoc in the temple, driving out the sacrifice merchants as if he owned the place. And this after he rode into Jerusalem like a hero to the wild cheers of thousands—many of whom proclaimed him the Messiah. And he did not refute them!

The leaders rejected Jesus as the Christ. After all, he was from God-forsaken Galilee. And he was a blasphemer and a chronic Sabbath-breaker—yet he called them hypocrites!

Now he had become a full-blown crisis. If they didn’t take decisive action soon, the Romans would get involved.

The problem was the crowd. They had to find a way to win the people to their side.

After some deliberation, they conceived a question that would surely hang Jesus on the horns of a dilemma. Either answer would incriminate him, divide the crowd, and give them cause to arrest him.

On Monday morning, as Jesus was teaching in the temple, the appointed delegation made their way to him through the crowd. The spokesman loudly asked, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

Jesus, sitting, leaned back a bit and squinted up at them. The tension was thick.

Then he answered, “I also will ask you one question, and if you tell me the answer, then I also will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, where did it come from? From heaven or from man?”

This was a stunning counter. They faltered. The crowd began to murmur. Their hesitation was humiliating.

They huddled for a quick conference. “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘From man,’ we are afraid of the crowd, for they all hold that John was a prophet.” How had Jesus managed to flip the dilemma horns around on them?

They decided not to grab either horn. “We do not know.” It was a politically expedient lie.

Restrained anger flashed in Jesus’ eyes. “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

*               *               *

The question the Jewish leaders asked, taken by itself, was not wrong. They were supposed to guard God’s truth and God’s people. That’s why Jesus was willing to answer it. But his prerequisite question revealed that their apparent truth-guarding was a sham.

John the Baptist’s love for God’s glory and truth had cost him his head. Jesus’ love for God’s glory and truth would get him crushed by God’s wrath. Jesus’ question was designed to reveal whether these leaders loved God’s glory and truth more than public approval. If they answered him straight, he would give them a straight answer to their question.

But they were “afraid of the crowd.” In other words, they loved their positions and reputations more than they loved the truth—more than they loved God. So they “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature (themselves) rather than the creator” (Romans 1:25).

We must remember that we do the same thing every time we distort or deny the truth for the sake of our own reputations. Self-glory is revealed to be an idol in our heart when the Lord presents us with an opportunity to glorify him by speaking the truth about our convictions or our sins, yet we are unwilling to do it for fear of what someone else will think of us.

We have all done this. Thank God for the cross! “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Let’s resolve to love God’s glory more than our own by being rigorously truthful in our professions and confessions.

What’s more impressive than standing in God’s presence? Sitting—and doing so at the right hand.

An angel said to John the Baptist’s father: “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God” (Luke 1:19). That’s noteworthy.

But more so is what Hebrews says about Jesus:

After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty of high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (Hebrews 1:3-4)

That’s worthy of worship.

Andrew Klavan, 54, is a writer of thrillers. His latest novel, and his first aimed at "young adults" (grades 8-11) is The Last Thing I Remember.

He recently described his move from Judaism to Atheism to Christ. His interview with Marvin Olasky moved me, especially the mercy of God in his conversion. He recounts a “prideful arrogant little prayer.”

In keeping with the way my life has worked, I was reading a novel by the guy I think is probably the best English novelist in the last part of the 20th century, Patrick O'Brien, who writes sea adventures. I was reading in bed and got to the scene where one of the main characters, Maturin, said a little prayer before going to sleep. That's the one thing I'd never tried. So I said a very brief prayer of thanks and it went off in me like a bomb. There are really no words to describe it. I have always thought it was a tribute to the generosity of God that even such a prideful, arrogant little prayer in some sense would be answered.

Fourteen years on, I have re-read the poem you let me read on that good day.

I still mean it and love to see you live it.

Josh Harris has done us a good service. He explains why many of us think it’s a bad idea to “tweet” while participating in corporate worship. That is, we think you should use Twitter before and after corporate worship to say what you take in and take out. But when you are in corporate worship, Worship! There is a difference between communion with God and commenting on communion with God.

Don’t tweet while having sex. Don’t tweet while praying with the dying. Don’t tweet when your wife is telling you about the kids. There’s a season for everything. Multitasking only makes sense when none of the tasks requires heart-engaged, loving attention.

There is an assumption that Josh and I share, which is not understood or embraced by all. Preaching and hearing preaching are worship. Preaching is expository exultation. The preacher is explaining the Bible and applying the Bible and EXULTING over the truth in the Bible. The listener is understanding, and applying, and joining in the exultation. Hearing preaching is heart-felt engagement in the exposition and exultation of the Word of God.

This is a fragile bond. The fact that an electric cord is easily cut, does not mean that the power flowing through it is small. It produces bright and wonderful effects. So it is with preaching. Great power flows through fragile wires of spiritual focus.

Perfume can break it. A ruffled collar can break it. A cough can break it. A whisper can break it. Clipping fingernails, chewing gum, a memory, a stomach growl, a sunbeam, and a hundred other things can break it. The power that flows through the wire of spiritual attention is strong, but the wire is weak.

So read Josh’s six points and let’s pursue God with all our might and focus during corporate worship. Then tell the world what God did. If it’s God’s power, it can wait an hour.

In the Religious Affections Jonathan Edwards ventures this explanation of why there is song and poetry.

And the duty of singing praises to God, seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections. No other reason can be assigned, why we should express ourselves to God in verse, rather than in prose, and do it with music, but only, that such is our nature and frame, that these things have a tendency to move our affections.

For this to have the weight it does for Edwards we need to remember that 1) “true religion consists very much in the affections,” and 2) there is no true Christian faith without the affections being awakened, and 3) God is most glorified when he is affecting us and not just known by us.

In the parable of the tenants, the owner of the vineyard finally sends his son to collect the fruit that the tenants refused to give to his servants. The tenants had beaten and killed the servants. But the owner says, “They will respect my son” (Mark 12:6).

This sounds like God, who is represented by the owner, thinks his Son will not be killed but will be well received. This would contradict the truth that God sent the Son precisely to die (John 10:18; Isaiah 53:10).

So someone might try to argue that Mark 12:6 supports the view that God did not know what would happen to the Son of God when he came.

The usual way of defending the foreknowledge of God and the predestination of the death of Christ by God (Acts 4:27-28) is to say that parables are not allegories.

That is, every detail of a parable should not be pressed to have a counterpart in the general point the parable is making. True. But in this case we can go farther.

The parable ends, “Have you not read this Scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?” (Mark 12:10-11).

In other words, Jesus points out that already in Psalm 118 written hundreds of years before the sending of the Son, the plan was laid out: The Messiah will be rejected, killed, and raised from the dead. And this is all “the Lord’s doing.”

The death of the Son was not a surprise. It was a plan.

So in the parable itself we are told not to construe the owner’s words, “They will respect my son,” as part of the way God is being represented. That is what a human owner might say. It is incidental to the point of the parable.

What God said, in fact, was: “The builders will reject my Son and I will make him Lord and Christ.”

The book of Judges—what a mess! It starts bad and gets worse and worse, then ends so poorly that it’s awkward to read in public.

Yet God put it in the Book and means it to be for “our instruction” (1 Corinthians 10:11; Romans 15:4). The author of Hebrews even goes so far as to mention Gideon, Barak, Samson, and Jephthah in his faith hall of fame (Hebrews 11:32). What are we to do with this?

Tremper Longman and Ray Dillard help us see how Judges is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16)—and for pointing to Jesus.

What a collection of human beings in the book of Judges! Strange heroes they are—a reluctant farmer, a prophetess, a left-handed assassin, a bastard bandit, a sex-addicted Nazirite, among others. It is easy at a distance to point out the foibles and failures of the leading characters in this downwardly spiraling story.

But lest we get too proud, Paul reminds us, “That is what some of you were” (1 Corinthians 6:11). With similar mixtures of ignorance, frail obedience, and tangled motives, we, like them, were “washed, sanctified, and justified” by the grace of God. For all of their flaws, we are to learn from their faith. For it was in faith that Gideon, Barak, Jephthah, and Samson “conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised” (Hebrews 11:32-33).

In spite of their failures, their faith was not misplaced. They become a part of that great cloud of witnesses calling for us to persevere and to fix our eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 12:1-2). We too need a champion to fight our battles for us, one raised up by God and invested with his Spirit in full measure; we too need a leader to secure for us the inheritance that God has promised, one who will perfect our faith. (An Introduction to the Old Testament, 143)