The answer is yes, of course He can deliver you from all that, but the truth is no, He won’t do it. Instead He’s interested in redeeming your life and forming you to be like Him mostly through the very things we want to avoid: the messy mundane things of life, relationships, work, family, church, and community. The comforting news is that He is with us always and He’s been here before personally. The Lord fully took upon Himself humanity in Jesus of Nazareth and entered completely into the human experience. So can He relate? Absolutely, and here’s why:

• #1 – Jesus had a family. This says it all. When he was born, he was born into a family that over time grew to be quite a household. He had a mother, a step-father, and brothers, and likely had sisters. At one point during his ministry, his mother and brothers chase him down to talk to him (Mark 3:31-34).
• #2 – Jesus knew how to make a meal. That’s right Jesus could cook. After His resurrection, Jesus prepared a meal of fish for some of His disciples. With His glorified hands, He filleted fish and baked bread over an open fire and fed his disciples (Jn 21:9-14).
• #3 – Jesus knew how to work a job. Survival in the First Century meant that the whole family worked. It was asked of Jesus, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?” (Mt 13:55). Presumably, Jesus learned this trade and spent much of his youth and young adulthood working. Think of this: Jesus of Nazareth spent more time on earth working prior to his ministry than He did in ministry.
• #4 – Jesus handled the small stuff. Not only did Jesus handle small stuff, He commended it to us. It was Jesus who took up the towel and poured water over the feet of his disciples and washed them (Jn 13:4-5). As we can see, Jesus did not belittle the mundane, but actually glorified it and demonstrates to us that literally every small thing can be a part of the eternal life we have now.
• #5 – Jesus had time for kids. While others attempted to shield Jesus from the children, Jesus rebuked them, and let the children come right to Him saying, “for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Mk 10:13-15).
• #6 – Jesus had time for parties. The first miracle of Jesus recorded in John’s Gospel was Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding party (Jn 2:1-12). And indeed, after He did so, the party apparently got better (Jn 2:10).
• #7 – Jesus lived under authority. The man with all power in heaven and earth did not grasp for authority, but submitted Himself to the divinely-appointed authorities in his own life. He was a good son, an obedient one, and Luke tells us that after the episode in the Temple, Jesus went home with his mom and dad and became submissive to them (Lk 2:51).
• #8 – Jesus had to pay taxes. Jesus didn’t even have the money to pay the taxes, but when they were asked of him, He performed a small miracle, and paid taxes (Mt 17:24-27).
• #9 – Jesus got hungry. After his 40-day fast, Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Jesus was hungry. Of course He was! How could He not be?
• #10 – Jesus got tired. When Jesus stopped in Samaria, we learn that He was weary (Jn 4:6). Before the miracle of the loaves and fishes, we learn from Mark that Jesus was trying to take  rest in the countryside (Mk 6:31). During a great storm at sea, Jesus lay sleeping in the boat (Mk 4:35-39).
• #11 – Jesus was misunderstood. When reading the Gospels it sometimes seems that the only ones who understood Jesus were his very enemies! In the whole of the Gospel of Mark, the first person to declare Jesus as the Son of God was the centurion overseeing His crucifixion (Mk 15:39). While the crowds followed, rarely did they fully understand, and the Twelve were often confused (Mk 15:16).
• #12 – Jesus’s friends didn’t all get along. The Twelve were no exception. They squabbled and vied for position in Jesus’s coming kingdom (Mk 9:33-35) and some even had their mother come and seek his favor (Mt 20:20-22).
• #13 – Jesus experienced the loss of a friend. In John chapter 11, Lazarus is no random dead guy, but Jesus’s own friend whose family He loved (Jn 11:5). When Jesus weeps, i.e. the shortest verse of Scripture: “Jesus wept” (Jn 11:35), let us lay aside all speculation, and just imagine that Jesus is weeping because of what Lazarus and his family had endured.
• #14 – Jesus experienced the full force of temptation. The Scriptures tell us that He was tempted in every way just like us (Heb 4:15), but we might add more so because He persevered through the personal attack of Satan himself (Lk 4:1-12).
• #15 – Jesus faced intense personal opposition. As His ministry wore on, Jesus collected more and more enemies who opposed him. Publicly they assailed Him with questions and criticisms. Secretly they conspired to destroy Him (Jn 11:45-57).
• #16 – Jesus submitted His will to God for very difficult obedience. Even Jesus did not find obedience easy or simple. When Jesus realized the nearness of His impending betrayal and death, He found strength only in long prayer during which He submitted Himself to God: “not my will, but yours, be done” (Lk 22:42).
• #17 – Jesus experienced personal rejection. This rejection began in his own hometown with his own neighbors who could not receive Him as Messiah because He had grown up in their midst as the son of Joseph and Mary (Mt 13:53-59). When He said hard things, some followers left to the point that Jesus even asked the Twelve, “will you leave as well?” (Jn 6:60-67). He was betrayed by own of his closest followers by a kiss (Lk 22:47-48). Ultimately His own nation and people rejected Him and turned Him over to be crucified (Jn 1:11, 19:16-22). And when this happened, his own hand-picked followers fled: “and they all left him and fled” (Mk 14:50). And in a tragic turn, His most ardent follower, Peter denied Him (Lk 22:54-62).
• #18 – Jesus experienced horrible physical pain. Crucifixion was the culmination of the Roman science of execution. It was designed to maximize pain, misery, shame, and humiliation for the sake of displaying the result of the Empire’s most severe displeasure. The experience of pain is difficult to compare, but surely Jesus endured among the worse for six hours on that dark Friday.
• #19 – Jesus experienced the full weight of guilt and shame for sin. As Jesus hung upon the cross, naked between heaven and earth, He endured not only terrible physical pain but also the full penalty of sin: separation from the Father. The wrath of God for all sin fell like a hammer from heaven and He screamed to the heavens: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34). Of all that we have covered so far, here we go beyond anything to which we can now relate to fully. Yes, we know what guilt and shame are, but we have never experienced the full wrath of God for sin. The glory of the Gospel is that this is something which believers will not have to relate to, but will be shielded from by the grace of God because Jesus has already endured that wrath.
• #20 – Jesus experienced death. The wages of sin is death, and sin, even when laid upon the perfect Lamb of God, sin resulted in death. Whatever the experience of death is, Jesus of Nazareth underwent it completely. His heart stopped beating, His brainwaves ceased, His lungs rested, and His life was gone. His body was removed from the cross lifeless, wrapped for burial, and laid in a tomb. Where our ancestors have gone, our loves ones laid to rest, and ourselves will someday go, even there Jesus has already been.

The greatness of our God is that the Lord Himself came to us. He experienced all this AND He is the Lord and Savior of all, present, near, and indwelling those who trust Him.  In thinking on all this, we are not to feel sorry for Jesus, but to praise God for our Savior Jesus is a great High Priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses (Hb 4:15).

In introducing this series this past Sunday, we began by pointing to the key text that we will return to again and again: “For even the son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Jesus Himself summarizes the goal of His mission to His disciples: He will lead and save by becoming a servant and a sacrifice.

We learned several key points this week:

• We are prone to creating imaginary Jesus’s. Many people detest religion, but almost everyone finds a way to like Jesus, and they do so by remaking Him in their image. Jesus is often made the poster-boy for their cause. But those are idols, images we’ve made up. What we want to do is follow the genuine Jesus of Nazareth, the one revealed in the Scriptures.

• Jesus can only be known through the Gospels about Him. No one knows Jesus better than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We say many things about Jesus, but often we do not know Him. He can truly only be known by digging in deep to the works He commissioned His followers to write. Out of 66 books of the Bible, 4 of them are portraits of this Jesus of Nazareth. What we should desire is to so know the Jesus of the Gospels that we grow to anticipate and expect how He would respond, act, do, and say. 

• Jesus was strange, much stranger than we’ve come to believe. Jesus could not be elected president were He with us today in spite of what either party might say. He was a first-century bearded Jewish, single man who traveled the countryside with a group of 12 selected disciples (mostly fishermen). His entourage was unimpressive, and the only animal we ever hear of him riding is a donkey, and he attracted the sick, the dying, and the poor by the thousands.

• BUT, the people loved Him. Jesus gave people, who had nowhere else to turn, hope, and He changed them forever. That is why we have their stories collected in the Gospels, because they really happened, and these people were really changed by their encounter with the magnetic prophet from Nazareth, Jesus.

• Furthermore, He could preach, flat-out preach. Jesus had an irresistible quality as a communicator and He spoke with power and authority. Not only did the masses with their needs come out to hear Him, but so did His enemies, and even the demons had to listen to His voice!

• We applied the message by urging ourselves to look to Jesus.  It is very easy for us to get distracted and lose sight of our Savior. But whatever you are going through this week, don’t look too deep inwardly, don’t try too hard to be perfect, and don’t pretend to have it all together. If we really believe that Jesus is the answer, then that starts with us. We have to believe that Jesus is the answer for us, in our homes, families, marriages, jobs, relationships, and neighborhoods. So look to Jesus, think on Jesus, meditate on the Son of Man on Mission, reflect upon the Cross, see Jesus lifted high, pick up the Gospel of Mark and read it. This is all good news. He came to call sinners, not the righteous, to repentance.

- John Stott, The Cross of Christ, 23

The passage in 2 Peter:3-11 has meant a very great deal to me in the past month, I have drawn much strength from it. There are so many great truths in this passage which sets forth God’s whole purpose for us in Christ Jesus to share in God’s divine nature, His power on our behalf is displayed, the necessity of our striving, a way that never fails, and a kingdom that does not end. Wow, this passage is rich, deep, broad, and strengthening.

Last Thursday, on Thanksgiving morning while I was sick, the three words came to my mind, “make every effort.” I was quite sure that they were from this passage and just before the instruction to add virtue to faith, knowledge to virtue, and so on. When I got my Bible and looked it up, I was thrilled to be right!

What struck me was the force of the instruction make every effort! I use italics, underlining, and boldfacing there to show the sort of crescendoing impact of those three words as I hear them.

In verse 3, the Apostle Peter tells us that God’s divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through knowing Jesus Christ. Then he turns around in solid apostolic fashion and tells us that we must do something in turn. We must make effort. The Gospel is opposed not to effort, but to earning. Even more though, we are to make every effort.

The effort we are to be making is clear: adding love to brotherly affection to godliness to steadfastness to self-control to knowledge to excellence (or virtue) to faith (to put in reverse order). And we are to be striving to take every opportunity to do so; every prayer, every service, every day, every song, every act, every thought, every word, every greeting, every project, every sermon, every car ride, every breath, every meal. We are to make every possible effort to grow from faith into love.

This short three-word phrase, “make every effort,” is code for spiritual discipline and it is how we sow to the Spirit (Gal. 6:7-9). And it calls us to repentance for our lazy Christianity and sluggish spirituality. True faith is going to require action; spiritual growth will not come laying down; progressing towards love will require movement. This is not going to be a sit-in, no letting-go-and-letting-God here. No, we are to be actively striving and acting in every possible biblical way to grow from faith into love (with every supplement mentioned in vv. 5-7 added along the way, though I don’t think the list is exhaustive).

This means the spiritual disciplines, both the personal and the communal, integrated into the very stuff of our life, our eating, drinking, breathing, working, playing, serving, all our moments and our days. Yes, we wait on God to grow us, but we are not idle: we do not wait by sitting, we wait by sowing.

I don’t know how you navigate life from day to day but one thing I have discovered in 2011 is that I simply cannot operate without a deep measure of joy in the living God.

If you grew up in a church using the Pentecostal Praises hymnal then you probably know what page 202A was: “Joy Unspeakable.” We wore that song out, but we loved it, and I loved it. I always was happy when the song leader turned to the organ player and said, “202A!”

But my favorite hymn on joy is this classic song, “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.” The melody was taken from the Ode to Joy, the last movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, one of the beautiful pieces of music ever written, and the words are from a poem written in 1907 by Henry Van Dyke. The melody and the words were published together for the first time in The Presbyterian Hymnal of 1911.

No other song captures for me the truth that God alone is the source of abiding and lasting joy. And I particularly enjoy this contemporary rendition of it with several new refrains added. It is the most played song on my iPod in 2011.

There are many things I can go without, but I tend towards despondency and the one thing I must have is joy in the Lord because joy and hope are two sides of the same coin.

Psalm 43:3-5 [ESV]
3 Send our your light and your truth;
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy hill
and to your dwelling!
4 Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God my exceeding joy,
and I will praise you with the lyre,
O God, my God.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.

A Neglected Essential from Southern Seminary on Vimeo.

Here is an outline of the whole exposition:

• The Ascension
  • Christ spent 40 days with His disciples before ascending answering their questions & teaching
  • The angels heralded His ascension just as they did His incarnation.
• Descriptive analysis of the passage:
  • He led them out
  • He lift up His hands (and blessed them, perhaps with the Aaronic blessing)
  • He left them
    • He was taken up into heaven in a cloud.
    • He had told his disciples: I am going to prepare a place for you that where I am you may be also.
    • Christ physically went and remains somewhere in the time-space universe.  That verse has to be held in the context of all the revelation of Scripture: Christ was Incarnated, died, buried, and rose again bodily.
    • The cloud here are not meant to make us think of the clouds of the sky but clouds in the Scriptures: The cloud that led the Israelites in the wilderness, the cloud on Sinai, the cloud that filled the Temple, the cloud on the mount of Transfiguration
    • He, as it were, ascended up into the folds of space (CS Lewis) – the realm of the 4^th dimension. This would make a good discussion over coffee!
• The Significance of the Ascension
  • The Ascension declares Mission Complete, the Work of Redemption is Finished.
  • The Ascension declares God’s mighty power.
  • The Ascension marked the return of Jesus to the Father, a return to the glory He had known before.
  • The Ascension inaugurated the giving of the Holy Spirit in a unique and unrepeatable way at Pentecost.
  • The Ascension guarantees our heavenly home.
• What is Jesus doing now that He has ascended?
  • Jesus is now presiding over the universe.
  • Jesus is now ruling His church.
  • Jesus is now with us in our weaknesses.
  • Jesus is now interceding for us.
• How His Disciples Reacted
  • They responded in adoration: “they worshipped him”
  • They responded in exultation: “returned to Jerusalem with great joy”
  • They resulted in preparation: “continually in the Temple”
    • Acts 1:8 – “wait until you be endued with with power from on high”
    • So the text leaves the disciples (in Luke 24:53) waiting, worshipping, and witnessing.
• Conclusion: Isn’t this what we are doing?
  • We are waiting
  • We are worshipping
  • We are witnessing

“Jesus, Thank You” by Sovereign Grace Music, led by Bob Kauflin.

Samson was driven by great lusts, he acted nearly always by impulse, and never does one get the sense that the man knew God. He had power with God but I never see in the text that he knew the Lord in any other sense than that his parents set him apart for God through the Nazirite vows. I think that part of the point of the narrative of Judges is to show the increasing wickedness of the people of Israel including their own judges. Samson appears to be one of the final judges and certainly the worst. The Samson narrative gives way to a period of syncretistic worship and civil war. A dark day indeed.

Judges 16 presents to us the final days of the life of the tragic Samson. He loved a woman in the Valley of Sorek. I love the literary compactness and concision of description in the biblical narrative. Epic. Her name was Delilah and she was the final of at least three Philistine women that Samson chased.

Delilah. What kind of woman was this? She asks her Israelite lover and strong man: “please tell me where you great strength lies and how you might be bound, that one could subdue you?” (vs. 6). What a bald and bold question! How could Samson not see her deception? Did he enjoy this cat and mouse game? Did he like walking on the precipice? Apparently. But eventually he was literally lulled to sleep on the lap of his enemy (v. 19). Then he was bound, his eyes were gouged out, and he was enslaved to grind at a wheel.

Regardless of the heroic moment of Samson’s death, this story is high tragedy as profound as anything Shakespeare could have imagined. A man, no matter how great, cannot toy with lust and win. He does not have the power. He will be destroyed by the very thing he desires.

I have been thinking about this verse a lot of recent. It motivates me and encourages me as a student of the Lord. Studying is a hobby of mind, as well as reading and collecting good books, so a Scripture like this ready ammunition against those who demean the labor of study and hard thinking.  But what can we learn from this verse?

First, studying is one of the basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life. Praising, praying, and pushing back our plates to fast are all basic disciplines but we rarely talk about this one, the discipline of study. Studying takes time. Studying requires effort. Studying requires patience. It is more than reading. It is doubtless related to seeking solitude and meditation but it goes beyond that. It involves an intentional seeking out, investigation, process of discovery, and the capture of one’s effort by pen, paper, keyboard, or computer.

Second, this discipline is engaged in by those who delight in the works of the LORD. There is a sense of inevitability here, like the moth drawn to the flame, or to give a more life-affirming metaphor, a deer drawn to a stream. We see here that the “upright” (vs. 1) are those who delight in God’s work. And because they delight in God’s works they are pulled into contemplation, reflection, and deep thinking on what God has accomplished, revealed, and spoken. This impulse to study is not driven by duty or demand but by delight. Delight is the greatest motivator in the world.  People do what they enjoy. What kind of people are the upright? Those who enjoy thinking upon the things of God. 

Of course, studying is not easy. We are talking about disciplines but drudgery is not a necessary component of discipline. Some use verses such as Ecclesiastes 12:12, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh,” in reference to study of the Scriptures but it does not apply here.  Ecclesiastes is a book which poetically and proverbially lays out the futility of man-centered thinking. In that context, the kind of study implied in Ecclesiastes is from a man-centered view of the universe that is “vanity of vanities.” Just think of the piles of books in the stacks of your nearby public university and imagine being stuck there forever looking for answers from the great learned men of the ages-Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Spinoza, and all the rest with their lineage of interpreters-and never able to arrive at coherent answers. Yes, that is futility!  Those books will wear you out, but the Book will give you life. University studies may exhaust you, but those who wait upon the Lord receive strength (Isaiah 40:31).

Third, the focus of study is on the works of the LORD.  It is the great works of the Lord that the upright delight in, not the exercise of study itself. Study for the sake of study for the sake of personal smarts is not the goal here, that kind of study is the kind that leads to weariness of the flesh! The works of the Lord is a broad term encompassing all that God has done from the awesomeness of His creative power, to His mighty acts of deliverance and judgment, the giving of His law, and His inspired words through the prophets.  This is all of reality under God and God-filled.  The upright see the universe as a stage for the drama of God’s plan.  This allows the believer to stake a claim on everything and study it before God with God in clear view but giving each subject its own due.  However, we must not lose sight here that the centerpiece of this study is God Himself and all His works.  There is an implied circle of delight here: God reveals Himself in His works, the upright delight in them and study them, God reveals more of Himself, the upright study and find delight, and forever this will continue…  As Lewis ended the Chronicles of Narnia with the words, “…and every chapter was better than the last!”

But I’ve heard some doozies as well.  Some real colossal failures (and that’s ok, I myself have preached some colossal failures) and a number of trite, silly ones too.  I’ve heard some things that were ridiculously off-base even while the congregation was shouting.  Oh, the things I’ve heard.

I’ve been told that when King Joash was smiting the ground with arrows at Elisha’s command (2 Kings 13:14-25) that it was a type of fighting the flesh.  Our bodies came from dirt, the ground, and the ground is the type of the flesh, and the smiting of the arrows is battling our flesh.  The way to victory, we were, told is to keep smiting the flesh.  It was the sort of biblical interpretation and preaching that the early Christian ascetics and self-flagellating medieval monks would have greatly enjoyed.

I’ve heard that a woman shaking her hair to God can bring victory over personal trials and the Devil.  And a number of other things have fallen out of bad approaches to 1 Corinthians 11:2-16.  I’m not sure how that all works.  If it has worked for some, I’m sure it has everything to do with the faith and worship of the woman, and not with the act of shaking the hair like a tribal dance.  One thing is for sure, the hair shake, is not in the text.

I’ve heard that we were right at the very end, the end of all things, just about every year since 1988, with a lot more of that thing during the first Gulf War, and a bunch just prior to 2000. Obviously, this hasn’t happened yet.  But it hasn’t kept preachers for trying to figure this out and creating all sorts of elaborate interpretations from parts of Scripture to account for the times.

I’ve heard a week-long exposition of the book of Esther as a blueprint for the endtime revival.  That was a long time ago, but I think by now the Church was already supposed to have been in control of the media for the spread of the Gospel.  Of course, that has not happened.  And let it be said: the book of Esther is categorically not a blueprint for endtime revival.

I’ve heard it said that the water of the sea of Galilee was a type of baptism.  That’s why the pigs of Gadara ran into the water after they were possessed by the demon(s) called Legion.  Evidently, the pigs were smart enough to know that water exorcised demons and therefore ran to the water to be free of them.

I’ve heard that everyone has “issues” of life just as the Samaritan woman had an “issue” of blood.  Ok, this is a serious equivocation of terms.  There are issues and then there are issues, the kind with blood, and they are not the same thing.

I once endured a re-telling of the Good Samaritan at a youth rally  as an elaborate allegory for the Christian life.  It would have made Origen proud.

More than a few times I’ve heard bible passages turned completely on their face.  Colossians 2 comes to mind.  Or Moses on the mountain determining the mountain’s boundaries as an example of a pastor setting standards (there are a number of reasons why that does not work).

I’ve heard numerous sermons where any mention of numbers leads to numbered lists of things we must do or know.  The four men who carried the lame man to Jesus and lowered him through the roof becomes “four for revival” or “four faithful foundations”, etc., etc., etc.  Any mention of three things in the text becomes: 1) repent, 2) be baptized, and 3) get the Holy Ghost.  (Of course, three things for Trinitarians becomes, yes, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost).

And sadly, there have been not a few times, when the text of Scripture read had nothing to do with the sermon preached.  Instead, the sermon was built on a poem, or a newspaper article, or an illustration, or a great story, or even a testimony.  And I must say, that if you are going to use newspaper articles please learn which papers are generally reliable and which ones are grocery-aisle rags.  The truth is that none of this is biblical preaching.  Granted biblical preaching can use poems, articles, illustrations, stories, and certainly testimonies, but biblical preaching must place the priority on the Bible’s contribution as the core of the sermon.

Whatever the results of the preaching, these are all failures of a sort.  Thank God, He can draw a straight line with a crooked stick.  Thank God, He can speak through donkeys.  And all we preachers and teachers are going to occasionally fail in this regard.  I myself have preached some real doozies.  I look back at my stack of sermons and a few of them still bring the color red to my cheeks and I want to burn the notes.  But with humility and an intense devotion to what the Scriptures actually say we can avoid the more spectacular kinds of hermeneutical and homiletical failures.

Looking at all of this, I am very, very thankful for the great number of times I’ve heard faithful preachers simply stick to the text and preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The power of God does not reside in fanciful reconstructions of the text, or in traditions of interpretations we’ve added, or in elaborate illustrations, or in rhetorical flourishes.  The power of God resides in the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ (Rom 1:16, 1 Cor 2:1-4).

I may have offended some of you in the reading of this, let me assure you: no offense intended.  All preachers have failed in this regard including you, your favorite preachers, me, and my favorite preachers.  This does not change the point made here: We need a radical re-commitment to the Scriptures and what they actually say.  I hope that you are in this (the call to preach) to proclaim the Word and get it right, because at the end of the day, when it comes to knowing God’s mind, the text of Scripture is all we have and it is sufficient (2 Tim. 3:14-16).

Brothers, we must be committed to the actual text of Scripture and to the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.    Sola Scriptura! Soli deo gloria!

“Discipline without direction is drudgery. But the Spiritual Disciplines are never drudgery as long as we practice them with the goal of Godliness in mind. If your picture of a disciplined Christian is one of a grim, tight-lipped, joyless half-robot, then you’ve missed the point. Jesus was the most disciplined Man who ever lived and yet the most joyful and passionately alive. He is our Example of discipline. Let us follow Him to joy through the Spiritual Disciplines.” – p. 24

My observations: We often follow godliness as some ambiguous idea, a misty mystery of drippy spirituality speaking puffy but pointless platitudes and cluttered cliches.  Or, on the other side, we fall off into a rule-based regulatory regimen created by men for divine extra-credit.  This is why, I think, we often end up with “grim, tight-lipped, joyless” robots of religion.  But in the Scriptures, godliness and holiness are not vague ideas, rather, in the New Testament, God has put a face on godliness.  The face of godliness and the figure of holiness in the New Testament is Jesus Christ.  He is what holiness and godliness look like. If there are things that Jesus did which trouble you (like dine and drink with sinners or overturn tables), or if even Jesus could not live up to your extra-credit system (he did have a beard you know), then your understanding of godliness and holiness must be re-framed.  Jesus is the direction of our godliness; Christ-likeness the goal of all our religion. If it (whatever it is) does not conform to that picture then it should be cut away as excess, and if it is excess it should not be added back in.

“I’ve seen Christians who are faithful to the church of God, who frequently demonstrate genuine enthusiasm for the things of God, and who dearly love the Word of God, trivialize their effectiveness for the Kingdom of God through lack of discipline. Spiritually they are a mile wide and an inch deep. There are no deep, time-worn channels of communing discipline between them and God. They have dabbled in everything but disciplined themselves in nothing.” – p. 21, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life

There’s still a lot of money in it, but no Cash.

It’s tired, but never Haggard.

It’s still got twang, but no Waylon.

They’re still dancing in a line, but it’s not all Strait.

“We need to get one thing straight before we go any further. Gottfried Wilhem von Leibniz (1646-1716) was the last man who knew everything. This means that no matter how compulsive we may be, no matter what expectations we think our professors or our congregations may have of us, no matter who we think we are, we can no longer hope to know everything. We cannot even know everything about some biblical book or pericope we might want to preach from. One important key to a lifetime of faithful, solid and productive exegesis is to remember that it truly does take a lifetime-and even then, it will not be finished! Go with what you have; build on what you gain. Listen, assimilate, absorb, but take your time… The temptation to feel responsible for buying a book (let alone reading it!) simply because it exists is an invitation to drop into the abyss.” – p. 94

- Russell Moore, Tempted and Tried

HT: dougwils.com

A summary exhortation by Moore: Why You’re Tempted.

An interview of Moore with Justin Taylor of Crossway:

HT: Justin Taylor

HT: dougwils.com