A Book to Consider

Anyone who reads Christian authors should be familiar with the late D. Martin-Lloyd Jones. Crossway has re-released his book on the kingdom. Here's the link if you're interested. http://www.crossway.org/blog/2010/01/the-kingdom-of-god-on-trackback-thursday/

The Deal of a Lifetime

In Pilgrim's Progress there is a scene where Christian is confronted by Satan, who offers to "double" his wages if he will return to the City of Destruction and his old way of life. Christian says that he cannot live on Satan's wages, for "the wages of sin is death" (Rom 3: 23).

Now, as a general rule I'm opposed to any evangelistic approach that speaks of salvation in "salesman" terms, but this is worth thinking about. The deal each of us has coming into the world is that we can work for all our lifetimes doing whatever we want, and at the end as a reward we will get an eternity of pain and loneliness beyond description. That's the "default" deal we have. And God is justified in that deal for two reasons. First, in ourselves we carry the defaced and deformed image of God as a result of the fall. God finds this deformed image worthy of judgment and condemnation. Secondly, as a result of the fall we freely choose sin and selfishness over obedience and love, and so God justly condemns us for our actions as well.

At the same time God is also loving and merciful. He, of his own initiative and not because of any merit in us, provided a way of escape from this sad condition. He sent his own Son, born of the virgin, to live the perfect life we could not and bear the eternal punishment we were due as a substitute for any and all who repent of their sins and trust in Christ alone for salvation. He offers peace and forgiveness in this life and eternal happiness in his presence in the hereafter. What does he require of you? Look to him for life. "That if you confess with  your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." "For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved" (Rom 10: 9, 13, NASB).

So will you stick with the deal you already have or take the free offer of mercy God extends? Where will you stand?

Hearing the Word

In Romans 10: 17 Paul says, "Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ." In our highly literate society, where reading is prized above all else (it seems), we've forgotten how to listen to the word. We do word studies, read commentaries, and some of us learn to study the Scriptures in Greek and Hebrew. We read and analyze the text ad infinitum. But do we hear the text? Can listening to the Bible bring insights that reading may overlook due to mental/input familiarity? I wonder.

So this year I'm not reading my Bible through. I'm hearing my Bible through. Some time back we bought the entire Bible on CD-ROM in the NIV. Now, I know that for serious study the NIV is not the best version to use. I prefer something more literal, like the New American Standard Bible or the English Standard Version; however, I don't have either of those in audio edition, and I've not worked through the NIV in several years. So I'm listening to the Scriptures every day. I'm getting some Old Testament and some New Testament. Right now, as might be expected, I'm working through Genesis and Matthew.

Here are my initial thoughts. The Bible was originally intended to be heard. In the days in which the biblical writers were living most people couldn't read and access to written materials was limited due to the expense involved in producing them. For thousands of years God's people listened as a handful of learned people read the text or recite it from memory. Listening to the Bible is a discipline that has to be learned. You don't just pick it up. I'm finding that in our day learning just to sit and listen takes a lot of effort. But this morning as I listened to the Sermon on the Mount I noticed things I'd never noticed before. Chapter 5: 1--20 is a kind of prologue to the rest of the message, and introduction if you will. The rest of chapter five is "stitched" together by means of the phrase "You have heard" (NASB). These become the connecting seams that hold that section together. In reading I never noticed that. It took hearing the text for me recognize the connecting flow of the Sermon at this point.

Try listening to the Bible and see what God shows you. You might find it challenging at first, but I thing you'll find it reward in the end.

On the Lighter Side

I love getting books as gifts. This year for Christmas I got a book by one of my favorite authors--Johnny Hart. The book, Growing Gold with B. C.: A 50 Year Celebration. Now, if you're like me and you've been a fan of B.C. for years, this book is something you need to get. It's not a comprehensive collection of all the B. C. strips. It is a good representative sampling of some of Hart's best work.

I got hooked on B. C. way back in high school. My piano/voice instructor's wife was a distant cousin of Johnny Hart, and they always had copies of B. C. and Wizard of Id on the coffee table. I would go early just to read the comic books while a school classmate had her lesson.

I've finished reading the book already. In it I found B .C. strips going back to the beginning of B. C. in the late 1950s. I saw B.C.'s character development and presentation from a short, fat cave man to the taller, somewhat leaner version we all know today. What I found most interesting was Hart's own testimony of overcoming hurdles to breaking into syndicated comic strip work, the inspiration he got from Peanuts, and the way he chose his main characters for the strip (turns out most are friends or relatives).

So what's missing? Well, Hart's classic Christmas and Easter strips are missing, and I wish they weren't. Hart has a way of sharing the gospel with his readers that is engaging, thought-provoking, and winsome. He doesn't preach at you with his Christian vignettes, but he makes you think about the message of Christ. I remember many years ago he had a Good Friday strip that my wife found quite disturbing. I told her to be patient, and wait for the Easter strip--that it would be okay. It was better than okay. Hart knocked it out of the park.

May we all be so gifted as to find winsome ways to take a positive stand for Christ.

A Christmas Meditation

Christmas day is almost done as I sit down to write. Christmas Eve was a late night as we filled the stockings and finally got to sleep after midnight. Christmas morning started at 5:30 when I found my oldest up with her watercolor set making last minute stocking stuffers for me and her mother.

By seven we were working on breakfast and getting everyone out of bed. At breakfast we read the Christmas story from Luke's Gospel, then we went to the living room to sing Christmas carols before getting into the gifts. The hardest thing about Christmas is keeping the incarnation of God in the person of Christ at the center of it. Many churches no longer have Christmas or Christmas Eve services. The focus is on gifts and food for so many people. For me Christmas is another opportunity to press the claims of the Gospel on my children and urge them to come to Christ. Today I spoke of the inn which had no room for a late-term pregnant mother and her traveling husband, and I raised the question, "Is there room in your heart for Christ?"

Think about it. The very one who created all things came to his creation only to be told, "No Vacancy!" when he arrived. John put it this way: "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." (John 1: 11). Did Christ find a place in your heart,  your home, your family at Christmas this year? Or was he crowded out by all the gifts, food, parades, and frivolity that have become part and parcel of the season? Did you take a stand for Christ this Christmas?

Ethics, Ecology, and Evangelicalism

In today's world ethics has been redefined from traditional morals about how you and I treat one another as human beings to how we treat the planet we live on. Everything is about going "green". My Boy Scout Council has set a goal to become a "green" council. We have a supplier that produces cups, plates, utensils, and trash bags out of biodegradable corn starch. They're really amazing, too, unless you have a corn intolerance. I'm not sure if enough of the corn would leach into food to become an issue, but I'm not willing to try it on my daughter who is very corn intolerant. But I love using the stuff myself. I also play guitar. And guitars are made of, well, wood, for the most part. And they're not just made of any old wood. Special woods are used, some from exotic places like Africa, India, or South America and Indonesia. My acoustic guitars are made by Walden (http://www.waldenguitars.com), and I love them. They are well made and affordable. Well, Walden has just announced a new "green" guitar in the name of ecological ethics--the Madera line. It's a beautiful instrument made of excellent woods from a variety of places. What's unique is not the wood itself but the suppliers. Apparently the suppliers for these woods are certified as participating in efforts to sustain the forests, presumably by replanting trees for the ones they harvest for guitar production. It's a great idea, and I applaud Walden for being involved in this. It will ensure that guitar players for generations to come will be able to buy and enjoy fine instruments crafted from the best woods.

Having said all of that, the question comes to mind, is ecology an ethical issue? If it is, how should believers respond to ecological issues?

First, I do believe that ecological issues are ethical issues. How we treat  the planet says something about how seriously we take our God-given stewardship of it (see Gen 1: 26--28). Secondly, believers should not respond to ecological issues in the same way as many others are responding. Much of the talk of ecological ethics today is rooted in the worship of "mother earth". Everything from questions about global warming (and there are a lot more questions now than answers in the wake of "Climategate") to whether I should burn charcoal in my grill to cook my deer steaks seems to be eco-ethical question these days (including whether I should have shot bambi to begin with).

How we treat the planet impacts how we treat each other. We do want to keep our planet in a healthy condition, because this is the only home we have until Christ returns. As believers you and I should demonstrate good and responsible uses of the natural resources we have. Every renewable resource should be maintained. If we drop a tree to make a guitar, another should be planted to replace it (foresters have a formula for how many trees should be planted--glad I don't have to keep up with that). We shouldn't pour paint thinner and other contaminants down storm drains or onto soil to contaminate ground water supplies. In short, we shouldn't just trash our planet. On the other hand, we shouldn't make everything here so "sacred" that we can't hunt or fish or harvest trees. We shouldn't worship the ground we walk on. God created all of this, and he will sustain it to the fulfillment of his purpose for human history, which will culminate in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. God is the one we should fear and worship. We should care for the earth because he has commanded it. Our exercise of ecological ethics should be an extension of our worship of God and appreciation of all the good things he has made. So take a stand for a Christian perspective on ecological issues and don't get caught up in the frenzy of an unbelieving world that makes ecology into a kind of religion in its own right.

Saint Nicholas vs. Santa Claus

With Christmas always comes the wonder of "Santa Claus", that jolly old bearded man in the red suit with the reindeer and sleigh and the bag of goodies. Oh, and let's not forget the elves who work in his shop building toys all year long. Personally, I'm not a fan of telling kids about "Santa Claus", and here's why. We tell them about both Santa Claus and the baby Jesus side by side. They grow up to find out Santa isn't real, and will that lead them to question whether Jesus is real, too? It's just a question.

But, I love Saint Nicholas. Not the fictionalized St. Nick but the real Saint Nicholas. Yes, he really lived. This morning I watched with my kids a Veggie Tales video that sort of tells the story of the real Saint Nicholas. I say "sort of" because the wonderful people at Veggie Tales always take some creative license to make the stories more readily understandable for kids, but they keep the essential facts in place. It's not a criticism, just an observation. I love Veggie Tales as much as any kid.

So who was Saint Nicholas? He was a bishop who lived in the Roman Empire during the last great persecution and into the early years of Constantine's reign and the legalization of Christianity. He lived in the Eastern part of the Empire, never saw the north pole, and was probably never fat. You can see an icon of Saint Nicholas at http://www.ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/icons/data/nikola.gif that represents how he is often viewed in the Orthodox Church. Saint Nicholas was a man of character and generosity. He endured persecution for the faith and was beaten so badly that his body appeared bruised for the rest of his life. He came from a wealthy family, and as a bishop he used his wealth to help the poor. One story relates how he dropped gold coins into the stockings of three poor sisters to provide a dowry for them so that they could marry. This the beginnings of the "stockings" legend related to Saint Nicholas. Another story relates that he was one of the 318 bishops at Nicaea in 325, and that he rose up in anger at the Arian heresy and struck an Arian bishop to the floor with his fist. Saint Nicholas was a man who was not afraid to take a stand for Christ and the gospel. He was not afraid to spend his wealth to help the poor. He was a respected bishop of unquestioned character and generosity.

May we all be more like Saint Nicholas--standing firm for the gospel with generous hearts toward the poor. The world needs to see what we stand for.