The Forest or the Trees?: Thoughts on Reading the Bible

Recently I came across a review of N.T. Wright’s new book on justification in the e-journal Themelios.  Though I have not read the book I am familiar with the ongoing debate between John Piper and N. T. Wright on the nature of “justification” in Romans.  Sidenote – an obvious conflict of interest exists when the reviewer is the executive pastoral assistant to John Piper.  However, more to the point of reading the Bible, the reviewer criticizes Wright’s exegesis by comparing him to Piper:

Exegesis has two different flavors for Wright and Piper. Piper wrestles word by word, proposition by proposition, and then paragraph by paragraph. Wright moves much quicker through large chunks of Paul’s thought, refers frequently to whole chapters and paragraphs…

Mathis illustrates a common mistake in reading Scripture.  To Mathis’ point, one must not merely hover over the text or keep the text at arm’s length.  However, the myth of word-by-word exegesis has been propagated to the exclusion of context.  Every word is important, but any given word, phrase, or paragraph is pointless if it does not contribute to a coherent whole.  There are many contemporary examples of preachers, teachers, and scholars who purport to do Biblically faithful exegesis merely by teaching word-for-word through a text.  However, it might be more impressive when one synthesizes and explains the content of an entire paragraph, chapter, or book in the Bible.

Are You Self-Aware?

They say “ignorance is bliss.”  It has always been my contention that ignorance is merely ignorance.  I do not believe that genuine bliss can contain ignorance.  Certainly when one is unaware they do not “worry” about their situation, but when informed with reality their is no true “happiness.”

If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 Jn. 1:8).

The reality of our situation is one of sin.  We are sinners in need of grace.  Ignoring this fact may give one an excuse to live in their own fantasy world, but it does not change the reality of their situation.

Rather than live in the myth of my own goodness, I pray that I understand the reality of my sin and I live in the reality of God’s grace.

Social Justice and/or Personal Holiness: A Quandry?

My mind has been unsettled recently about the relationship between social justice and personal holiness.  My own experience with the Church has been in settings that almost exclusively focus on issues of personal morality (e.g., fornication, lying, etc.).  I think there is good reason for this.  Take the Ten Commandments for example, they seem primarily concerned with one’s relationship to God.

On the other hand, there are well-meaning Christian and non-Christian groups that continually sound the alarm concerning the thousands of people that die every day from preventable disease around the globe, the children dying from starvation in other countries, the children kidnapped and forced to kill as soldier’s for a cause that is not there own.  I could go on and on about modern day slavery and the like.

I don’t have the answer, but I am coming to some preliminary considerations.

1.  Personal holiness and social justice are intertwined. Jesus makes it clear that love of God and love of others are two sides of the same coin.

2.  Christians need to be careful what they emphasize. On Derek Webb’s so-called controversial new album “Stockholm Syndrome” he has a lyric that reads:

If I can tell what’s in your heart / By what comes out of your mouth / Then it sure looks to me like being straight / Is all it’s about

I believe that marriage and sexuality are gospel issues.  However, I do not believe they are the only issues.

3.  The gospel is both foundational and transformational. The gospel does not speak to only personal struggles but, also, the redemption of the world.  Genuine service to the downtrodden is not less than the proclamation of the gospel, but it certainly is more.

These are some initial thoughts.  What do you think?  Any advice on how to think clearly about these issues?  Leave some comments.

To My Dad: Thanks

This will be my turn to brag a little about my dad.  He is the most talented musician I have ever met.  However, I have watched him sacrifice personal acclaim for the service of Jesus.  This past Sunday night he taught from Psalm 118 at his church.  If you are familiar with SBC churches you might understand how rare it is to find a “Music Minister” who is genuinely qualified and gifted to be a pastor.

When I was in high school I was tired of “church.”  I was sick of people who called themselves Christians and demonstrated the opposite in their living.  It was only the consistent example of my parents at home and in public that reassured me that Christianity was for more than just “show.”  My dad has always modeled a servant’s heart, a scholar’s mind, and genuine commitment to the Lordship of Christ in all things.

The Bible is clear that the home is an essential component in the discipleship of children.  I once heard a youth pastor say about the role of the church, “we can’t fix in four hours what you screw up in seven days.”  Maybe not the most sensitive statement, but definitely true.  Parents provide the framework for Christianity and the way they live and parent will either affirm or deny the legitimacy of the gospel in the life of their children.

The Gospel for All of Life

October 23-25 Nansemond River Baptist Church (Suffolk, VA) hosted a D*Now weekend for young adults  (“Disciple Now” for those unfamiliar).  I wanted to bring in a few good teachers so I convened the “unlikely disciples” triumvirate.  All of the Bible Study materials and worship services were directly focused on Paul’s letter to the Galatians.  The result was a chance to hear, explain, and apply the gospel while modeling how to read a meaningful unit from the text of Scripture.

Below are the four main teaching times from Bryan and Andy (apologies that Bryan’s second message was truncated due to technical difficulties on the recording end).

Bryan Barley: The Gospel Matters (Galatians 1:1-10)

Andy Metzger:  Gospel Confrontation (Galatians 2:11-16)

Andy Metzger:  Do I Have a Story to Tell? (Galatians 4:8-11)

Bryan Barley:  The Gospel for All of Life (Galatians 5:1-6)

Nostalgia and Self-Justification

Today I read a great blog post entitled “Myth of the Good Ole Days.”  The author makes many cogent arguments.

There is no such thing as the good ole’ days. It is a myth constructed by people with amnesia who have forgotten or have chosen not to remember the problems and perils of earlier days.

This is a subject that I have thought about frequently.

The other day a sweet sister in Christ sincerely asked me how I could work with young adults.  “They’re just so much worst than when I was young,” she said.  Now I have no doubt that she was sincere in this observation, but I had to remind her that sin is not limited by generation.  Technology and style has changed, manifesting sin in new and creative ways, but the human condition remains the same.  In the twenty-first century Americans struggle with internet pornography and materialism, in the 19th century it was legalized segregation, in the 18th century slavery and oppression of Africans and Native Americans, and the list goes on and on.  Materialism and greed is cross-generational and we still struggle with the early heresy of America as a Savior-nation.

As sinners we like to set ourselves up as the standard of “what is right.”  We demonize the sins of others (e.g. homosexuality, abortion, etc.) and minimize our own (e.g., materialism, greed, etc.).

The gospel is for every generation.  The human heart has always struggled with idolatry and self-justification.

Crucifying My Wife

It is disconcerting to be vulnerable on the “interweb.”  I am about to share my marital woes with millions of my closest friends.  Here goes anyway…

I’ve been thinking a lot about idolatry and my own life.  I have a lot of idols (e.g., sports, dreams, job, popularity, friends, etc.).  The most dangerous idol I have recently discovered is the one God has called me to love more than myself — my wife.

In my haste to love and adore my wife (which I most certainly do), I have put a lot of expectations on her.  I noticed recently that I started to get very terse with my wife when she let me down in even the smallest ways.  Their are a myriad of reasons why this is the wrong way to act (e.g., she is the most talented and loving person I know, I act like a jerk way more than she does, she demonstrates sacrifice toward me every day, etc.).

Here is one way that Donald Miller explained it recently:

I realized that for years I’d thought of love as something that would complete me, make all my troubles go away.  I worshiped at the alter of romantic completion.  And it had cost me, plenty of times.  And it had cost most of the girls I’d dated, too, because I wanted them to be something they couldn’t be.  it’s too much pressure to put on a person.

That is so true.  Only God can handle the “pressure” of demonstrating perfect love.  The application of this sentiment is what hit me the hardest.  Here is how Miller finished his thought:

I think that’s why so many couples fight, because they want their partners to validate them and affirm them, and if they don’t get that, they feel as though they’re going to die.  And so they lash out.  But it’s a terrible thing to wake up and realize the person you just finished crucifying didn’t turn out to be Jesus.

Ouch.

Talk is Cheap

It is abundantly clear that God has put my wife into my life for the purpose of sanctification (among other things).  During a recent six hour car ride from Pennsylvania, Whitney was sharing what she was learning from the Bible (sidenote: long car rides are some of our favorite time to talk and laugh together).  She read a passage from Isaiah 58:

The kind of fasting you do won’t get your prayers off the ground.  Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after: a day to show off humility?  To put on a pious long face and parade around solemnly in black?  Do you call that fasting, a fast that I, YHWH, would like?

This is the kind of fast day I’m after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts.  What I’m interest in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families (Isaiah 58:3-7)

This sounds very similar to Jesus’ description of humility in Luke 18:9-14 and genuine discipleship in Matthew 25:31-46.  Jesus describes this sort of hypocrisy when he quotes Isaiah 29:

You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me.  But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men’ (Matthew 15:7-9).

John Sailhamer summarizes Isaiah 58:1-14 as follows:

The kind of repentance God required of his people is a contrite heart and a life of good works.  There was little value in fasting if one’s life did not reflect compassion and obedience to the will of God.

What good is singing a song (hymn? chorus? psalm?), attending church, praying, fasting, or (even) reading my Bible if my actions and attitudes do not legitimate these practices.  Thank God for grace to try again, for a holy dissatisfaction regarding my unholy life, and disdain at my hypocrisy.

Reflections on “God Exposed.” (Part 2)

How do I describe the impact of C. J. Mahaney’s message this weekend?  I have yet to hear a teacher of the Bible who so accurately understands his own shortcomings yet so clearly magnifies God.  Mahaney taught from 2 Timothy 4:1-5 and encouraged faithfulness to the gospel through the content and character of the preacher.

Mahaney made clear that the Word of God is essential to the church.  Before being overwhelmed by the obvious he traced out the implications of such a thought.  For example, the primacy of the Word of God should be reflected in the schedule of the preacher (i.e., I should set aside adequate time to unhurriedly exegete, applicate, and illustrate the text of Scripture).  I cannot let lesser duties overwhelm this primary concern nor can I allow sinful procrastination to cripple my Bible Study.

I was also reminded during this time that a pastor/elder is most adequately equipped to teach the Bible at a particular church because preaching requires pastoral skill and discernment to teach and apply the Bible.  A pastor should know the struggles and victories of his congregation and, therefore, know the appropriate use of admonition and exhortation.  I would not want to admonish the weak and encourage the unruly!  This requires an atmosphere of community that is conducive to openly sharing life.

Mahaney pierced my heart with his encouragement to preach “with all patience” (2 Tim. 4:2).  It is sometimes easier to give a weekly monologue than be patient with people.  I must always keep in the front of my mind God’s patience with me.  Further, I cannot expect my listeners to immediately understand and apply everything I preach.  God has been slowly working on my heart and I have been “living in the text” for weeks.  How foolish of me to think that what took me weeks and years to understand will immediately be fully grasped by my audience.  Further, it is the height of arrogance to think that I am such a good communicator as to condense years worth of Biblical study and personal sanctification into a single hour-long sermon.

All-in-all I must persevere in the careful and consistent teaching of the Word of God and “be grateful and surprised” that anyone shows up to hear me speak at all!

Reflections on “God Exposed.” (Part 1)

This past weekend (September 25-26) I attended the 9 Marks “God Exposed” conference held at SEBTS.  My heart and head are both full from the information and exhortations I received.

Audio from the event can be found at the SEBTS website.  On the IX Marks website some blog reflections can be found.

Mark Dever opened the conference with a message from Mark 4 that was encouraging and convicting.  He challenged us to depend totally on the power of the Word of God and not on our own personality, creativity, or intelligence.  Being dependent on God and His word leads to humility and confidence (two traits that I normally view as opposed).  We have humility because we realize that God is accomplishing the growth of the Kingdom of God.  We have confidence in the fact that God will accomplish what he promised.  I was reminded through this exhortation not to confuse size with significance in my own ministry.  Further, I am thankful that God chooses weak vessels.  One memorable quote from Dr. Dever:

If you think you can be filled with the Spirit without being filled with the Word, you need to check what Spirit you are being filled with.

Dr. Akin underscored this point during the Sermon Review (an idea I wholeheartedly recommend for teachers of the Bible) by showing the connection between being filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18) through the word of Christ (Col. 3:16).

The Word of God is powerful because God is powerful.  The Word of God will be victorious because God is the victor.

You have been born again: not originating from the mortal but from the immortal, that is through the living and permanent word of God.  ‘For all flesh is like grass and all its glory is like the flower of grass.  The grass withers and the flower falls off but the word of the Lord endures into eternity.’  Now this is the word which was preached to you (1 Peter 1:23-25).