4th Order Doctrine? I think not…
July 28, 2008
I just wanted to ask for prayers from my brothers and sisters. I pray for two things: grace and boldness.
As I am approaching the school year when the ministry with which the Lord has blessed me begins more consistently in my local church (as students begin to come back to class), I am bombarded with ridiculous voices that tempt me to worry. There are in fact many voices. I must cut them down with God’s sharp word.
Most particulary, I ask for prayer on this issue. I may be bringing up a biblical principle in my opportunities of vocal influence that might make some people uncomfortable. I am truly frightened at this prospect and more disgusted that this prospect exists.
That Biblical Manhood and Womanhood is so hated in today’s evangelical church is quite tragic. That anyone who brings up what God says on the matter must face the scorn and contempt of fellow Christians is quite pathetic. I don’t believe this issue is forth order doctrine. My friends, it is much more important than the details of each other’s end times theology. It is God’s created order and God’s own word that’s facing attack. What results and has been resulting is tragic. I am seeing lives around me flounder and burn because of so much confusion on this subject. It must be addressed.
“Just as in the days of the Apostles, so as this day we are forced to hear from certain denominations that we (by our obstinacy to adhere to the truth) do offend against love and unity in the churches, because we reject their doctrine. It would be better (they say) that we should let it pass, especially since the doctrine in dispute is what they call ‘non-essential’, and, therefore (they say) to stir up so great a discord and contention in that church over one or two doctrines (and those not the most important ones) is ‘unfruitful’ and ‘unnecessary’. To this I reply: Cursed be that love and unity which cannot be preserved except at the peril of the word of God.” – Martin Luther
Only yesterday, I received some distressing news. In fact, the news went with me to bed. It lay next to me and stared into my open eyes. It was on the ceiling, and it whispered in my ear. It haunted me until the ebb and flow of consiousness exited, and sleep took hold in a blur of restful worry.
It was this simple statement: “[They are] going to see if Rob Bell can come to Wayland and speak at chapel.”
Some of you don’t really understand how much that worries me or for that matter, why it worries me. While this is not a post about the harms of a ministry like that of Rob Bell’s, I will say that my first concern is not for what is there in his ministry. Rather, it is a concern for what is not there. Namely, the gospel of God, clearly taught and preached. I know that this comes from a lack of respect for God’s Word. Where you find a lack of respect for God’s word in a ministry, there you will find a lack of faith in God’s Word in a ministry. Where a minister has a lack of faith in God’s Word, there you will find those to whom he ministers lacking faith in God’s Word, too. Frighteningly enough, very few of today’s evangelical church members even know what the gospel is, and this is due to an infantile and weak understanding of the Bible and of the very religion to which we hold. What’s more, while they will be held accountable for not searching deeply and heartily the Scriptures on their own, their pastors, entrusted by God to guide them, will be held accountable all the more. May they tremble at that truth. You who seek to lead God’s people through the preaching and teaching of the Word, tremble at that truth, too.
That is all I will say about Rob Bell. Unfortunately, many of my friends really like him. I say this to them with respect, gentleness, but honest and concerned boldness: If you want to grow closer to God, you could do a whole lot better than to listen to this man.
Nevertheless, my point is this: Worry haunted me into the night.
How does one fight this?
I suggest this one truth: preach the gospel to yourself.
Listen to the edifying and eloquent preaching of a newborn heart, and spurn the dismantling and eloquent taunting of indwelling sin.
It comes to this: To whom will you listen? The fleshly man or the spiritual man.
Here is a concept by Dr. Paul Tripp, a Biblical counselor whom I discovered through the ministry of C.J. Mahaney,
“No one is more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to you more than you do. You’re in an unending conversation with yourself. You’re thinking to yourself all the time, interpreting, organizing, and analyzing what’s going on inside you and around you.”
It’s really true. Who do you hear most of all? Not mom, not dad, not friend, not pastor, not brother or sister, not girlfriend or boyfriend. More than anybody else, you hear…you.
Isn’t that an amazing truth? It’s true because you live inside yourself. The only one who knows you better than you is God, so as far as mankind is concerned, you are the most influentual person in your life.
So, you have to decide: When should I listen to myself?
First and foremost, you must understand, how incredibly depraved you really are.
“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick, who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9
Must I also type out all of Romans 7 for you to display and present the complexities of the human condition. Paul knew it…you know it.
So friend, who do you listen to? I share with you one quotation from D. Martyn-Lloyd Jones’ book Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures:
“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”
Did you see that? Read it again.
My problem last night was that I was not telling myself what is true.
That statement from Martyn-Lloyd Jones set me free last September when I first read it. It set me FREE.
What do I need to do? Preach the gospel to myself.
Jesus Christ, the living and abiding Son of God, came to earth and lived a sinless life. He NEVER sinned. EVER! He lived a sinless life, and he was scourged and beaten and mocked and reviled and hated until he was led like lamb to be slaughtered on a device of torture, that bloody-yet oh so beautiful-cross. That’s the most beautiful blood in the World! It poured and spilt to the ground as he died, praying for those who killed him. And on that cross, he bore my sins. When he died, reigning sin in my life died, too. Death died, too! There is nothing in my future that will take that from me! Nothing! Christ has finished it. What’s more, three days later he rose again. He killed my sin, and he killed my shame. I am free in Christ. What have I to worry about. “He who did not spare his own son but freely gave him up for us all-how will he not with him freely give us all things?” Romans 8:32
Because of Christ, what have I to worry about? It’s finished. Seek first his rightousness, that rightousness imputed to me by faith in Him. That is the gospel.
My response: Repentance and belief.
If you are worrying about tomorrow, repent and believe the gospel of God.
If you are worrying about this country, repent and believe the gospel of God.
If you are worrying about your friends because many times, they don’t seem to be concerned about holiness, repent and believe the gospel of God.
Preach the gospel to yourself.
I suggest C.J. Mahaney’s sermon from New Attitude 2008 entitled God’s Word and our Feelings at www.newattitude.org. In it, he exposits Psalm 42.
It set my brother free, and it will set you free, too. So what can I say about the possiblity of this guest speaker coming to speak to lost souls who need the gospel here at my school? I cite this truth:
“And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole word as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come….false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.” Matthew 24:10-14, 24-25
I think the key here is that people like this man will come and lead many astray. “See, [he has told us] beforehand.” People will even attempt to lead astray God’s elect. But Jesus is so careful when he adds, “if possible.” I praise God’s name that a man like Rob Bell has no power to touch God’ s elect. It’s not possible. In addition, the gospel WILL be proclaimed to all the nations. There is no doubt about that because my Lord said it will be.
I am arrogant and prideful to think that Rob Bell has enough power to thwart God’s will. And oh how many are much worse than he. Even Oprah and her pluralistic mysticism can’t touch my Lord and his sovereign will to gather his people to himself.
Truth has set me free from worry. Listen to the truth of the newborn heart, born again by the living and abiding word of God. Cultivate that truth in your heart by hiding it there. Do you even what’s true? I tell you where to find it: God’s own Word. Know the Word, and you’ll know how to fight worry. That’s how I do it.
Working with you to listen intently to the eloquent preaching of a newborn heart,
Vince R.
If I had the resources, I’d be in Minneapolis, Minnesota in September. I look forward to the sermons on the internet after this occurs. As an English guy, this conference is causing my mouth to water. Words really are powerful enough to get us a man like Hitler. Don’t forget it. God’s words are really powerful enough to create the entire universe. Don’t ever forget that!
Working with you to comprehend the powerful tool of Words,
Vince R.
What does it mean to be in “Union with Christ?”
July 18, 2008
That very title deserves many books and a whole week of seminars from theologians much more qualified than I, but perhaps I could enlighten you with some thoughts I had on this question recently. What is “Union with Christ?”
First, I propose that the Bible teaches the Gospel is good news for sinners because it tells them of an alien righteousness. The doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is central to the message of the gospel. The doctrine of justification through faith is central to our response to the gospel. But in addition to faith, repentence must precede and follow it. While repentence is most defintely a turning away from sin, it must include knowledge of sin. Then, it must go to contrition for sin. Then, it must go to confession of sin. This whole process, which happens only by grace through the movement of the Spirit and by the hearing and seeing of the Word of God, then leaves a sinner totally cast off from all remnants, specks and spots of self-righteousness. He then searches desperately for an alien righteousness, a righteousness apart from him.
The sinners stands trembling as he recognizes his total guilt and unjustified sinfulness. He is alone and without help. But, oh, herein is the good news of the gospel:
“For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Romans 10:13
That means EVERYONE who does this will be saved. But one cannot take this verse alone. Why does one call on the Lord? He must know why, or he will not be saved. God does not save them who have no need of him. Or at least, think, feel, act, and live as though they don’t need him.
A man with repentence in his heart can do Romans 10:13 and so be saved.
So then, Jesus says, “repent and believe the Gospel of God.” Mark 1:15
For, you see, the Gospel of God demands obedience. Too often the church has thought that God’s Old Testament demand for obedience has somehow dwindled or slackened in the New Testament. As though, God somehow took “a happy pill” between the Old and New Testaments. The immutability of God tears down such a heretical idea. He does not change!
He was, He is and He will always be HOLY!
A holy God demands you to be holy, too. Thus, when Jesus came, I dare say, he took God’s demand for obedience and made it only more difficult! No longer is adultery wrong, but even lusting after a woman is adultery! He made a matter of the heart.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jeremiah 17:9-10
The heart of the matter is the matter of the heart. We just plain need new ones. God give us new hearts!
But here is the gospel!
The difference the New Testament does bring is exactly the meaning of the words “New Testament.” It brings a “New Covenant.” Oh, friends, here is the grace of God so wonderfully exposited. Notice these awesome words I read yesterday in the reading calender:
“And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the (new) covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Matthew 26:27-28
My mind immediately went to Jeremiah 31:31-34. But I remembered, first, that God means for us to interpret the Old Testament Scriptures with the New Testament Scriptures (namely, through the lense of the person of Jesus Christ). I, therefore, remembered Hebrews 8.
“But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says:
‘Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my convenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be thier God and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.’
In speaking of a new covenant, he made the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” Hebrews 8:6-13 (Jeremiah 31:31-34)
These verses mean that now, in Christ, by the Spirit, for the Father, we can be obedient. God doesn’t write the law on tablets of stone, he writes it on our hearts!
Notice Ezekiel’s words:
“Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has bee profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations and gather you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
That’s the essence of obedience to the gospel: God creates in us what he demands from us. That’s good news!
Only because of the finished work of Christ (his death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and intercession) is our obedience righteous. Before it was stained with sin! Now, It is righteous because we are hidden in Christ. When the Father sees us, he sees Christ.
“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Colossians 3:3
I love Ephesians 1:3-14. It is so precious to me. But the other day I noticed how all the truths of it emphasize the phrase “In Christ” either by the proper noun or the pronoun “him.” Note the awesome truths of those people whose God is the Lord:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, when he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fulness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
And, again, note Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:
“For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has annointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” 2 Corinthians 1:20-22
Oh my brothers and sisters, are you “in Christ?” How many times does John, the one whom Jesus loved, exhort us to “abide in Him?” I leave you with an imperative from God through that apostle’s first letter:
“And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming.” 1 John 2:28
Working with you to be In Union with Christ,
Vince R.
The Grammar of the Gospel with Sinclair Ferguson
July 18, 2008
Indicative basically means “what is true.” This is indicative: You are united with Christ through faith by the Spirit. Imperative basically means ”what you should do.” This is the imperative: Now, therefore, put off Adam, and put on Christ.
Here is Scripture with color-coded indicative and imperative::
“If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Colossian 3:1-5
What does it mean to be in “Union with Christ”? This is what I am learning. Here is Sinclair Ferguson on the Grammar of the Gospel as somewhat explained above.
Working with you to speak and live the grammar of the gospel,
Vince R.
“And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 25:30
So says our Lord in his Olivet discourse which I finished reading this morning. As many have put it, much of our understanding of Hell has come from Jesus Christ. Without him, we would almost have no doctrine concerning it. Beware those who say there is only anihilation! There is a real hell, and in it “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” for eternity. No ceasing of existence, but eternal punishment apart from God’s presence.
This concept of “outer darkness” caught my eye this morning. I just finished Cormac McCarthy’s second novel Outer Dark this past Sunday. I have decided to write my undergraduate thesis on some aspect of this man’s novels. I am charged with reading all ten before January 2009. I have three down, Blood Meridian: Or Evening Redness in the West, The Orchard Keeper, and now, Outer Dark.
Outer Dark is one of the most disturbing books I have read. Not the most-that would go to Blood Meridian.
But why, Vince, do you engage in such dark and hopeless texts? Cormac McCarthy is notorious for his intense violence and heart-wrenching theses.
I approached this project after having seen the Cohen Brothers film version of No Country for Old Men. After seeing it once, I was hooked. I didn’t understand this man’s point very well, and I’m sure the directors added their own flair and tastes. But McCarthy is no author you hear of very much. He almost hides from the public eye (something I admire). He gave his stamp of approval on this project which I found interesting. The film is brilliant. If you don’t think so, see it again. It’s very close to the novel I understand. Thus, my interest came.
After much thought, I knew I wanted to engage in the man’s mind. I don’t know his mind, nor will I ever. But with 10 novels filled with violence and the good ol’ South, I’m entranced to see what compels him.
Speaking from the English Major side of my mind: This man’s prose is some of the most beautiful I’ve ever read.
Speaking from the closet-Theology Major side of my mind: This man’s worldview seems hopeless.
Note this comment from one of his characters in Outer Dark.
Hard people makes hard times. I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away (p. 192).
I don’t know with whom McCarthy identifies in his novels, but I suppose that his basic thesis for this novel is simply this: It’s better to blind than to have to view the outer darkness of this world.
There is so much imagery of a good darkness (ignorance) and bad darkness (reality). I will not give away the plot or the events, but his protagonists basically go through hell to no avail. It’s quite heart-breaking. Here’s one passage from a minor character on the long journey, a Reverend:
“I won’t tell it all. This blind feller hollered out one time and said: Looky here at me, blind and all. I guess you reckon I ort to love Jesus.
Well, neighbor, I says, I believe ye ort. He give ye eyes to see and then he tuck em away. And maybe you never was much of a christian to start with and he figgered this’d bring ye round. They’s been more than one feller brought to the love of Jesus over the paths of affliction. And what better way than blind? In a world darksome as this’n I believe it’s got a good deal to recommend it. The grace of God don’t rest easy on a man. It can blind him easy as not. It can bend him and make him crooked. And who did Jesus love, friends? The lame the halt and the blind, that’s who. Them is the ones scarred with God’s mercy. Stricken with his love. Ever legless fool and old blind mess like you is a flower in the garden of God. Amen. I told him that.” 226
It is better to be blind, it seems to say, Jesus loved them the most. This discourse, I think, holds an element of his thesis. Lastly, we note a blind man answer to a question near the end of the book:
“I ain’t never prayed. Why don’t ye pray back your eyes?
I believe it’d be a sin. Them old eyes can only show ye what’s done there anyways. If a blind man needed eyes he’d have eyes.” 240-241
Interesting…these are just a few thoughts I had regarding my most recent reading.
Nevertheless, I look at this and wonder-were there no God, this thesis would be true.
Indeed, apart from God, what hope is there? The Outer Darkness of this world, hell on earth, might just make me want blindess. As Hemingway put it, “The world will kill you.”
Indeed, in my literary studies, I often see such hopelessness in the literature from the 1950s-today. Post-modernism has no hope in it. Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, for instance, is brilliant, but completely hopeless. I’m mostly interested in this worldview because I know that it controls our culture in America today.
God’s people, however, have hope. When we face the seemingly hopeless incidents I read about, my one remembrance should be these words:
…hope does not put to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Romans 5:5
Like that character and many of McCarthy’s characters, I often feel like an old world-wearied man (sitting on the porch in my rocking chair, shotgun across my lap, hound dog to my side) and wondering why God hasn’t just put out the sun and gone away considering how evil we are.
Thanks be to God. He’s staying right where He is, and He’s on my side in Christ Jesus. Whom shall I fear?
Working with you to see hope amidst the outer dark,
Vince R.
McCarthy, Cormac, Outer Dark. Vintage Books. New York. 1968
Pride, Truth and Humble Pursuits
July 10, 2008
Many elements of biblical truth perplex the human mind. Many of them exist which do seem to contradict one another. However, to react by attempting to reconcile those two truths and so change or edit them is to place yourself in the role of God. Such has been the constant endeavor of the wicked human heart. “Ye shall be as gods…” It is a pride found in Satan himself. My plea, friends, is that you lean not on your own understanding but embrace God’s revealed word as the only source of truth as we may know it.
I think of Christ’s priestly prayer when he prayed, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.” John 17:16-19
Our God is not of this world; he is above and over it. He is not bound to our finite minds. His sovereign word is truth, and only by grace are we able to grasp it, if at all. If we don’t understand truth, our reaction as his people must never be to modify it. It should always be to embrace it, however confusing. In the midst of our confusion, our enlightened eyes should prayerfully and diligently pursue even more enlightment in the Scriptures. This is a humble pursuit. God is not the problem or the conflict. We are. We have no other course but a humble pursuit of God’s own will. We will find no truth in ourselves or in our minds because we are not its source. Humble pursuits are found under the mighty hand of God, where he reveals himself to those who ask him.
“The various elements of truth stand in perpetual antithesis, sometimes requiring us to believe apparent opposites while we wait for the moment when we shall know as we are known. Then truth which now appears to be in conflict with itself will arise in shining unity and it will be seen that the conflict has not been in truth but in our sin-damaged minds.” -A.W. Tozer, “The Knowledge of the Holy.”
Pride will not find truth; it will only suppress and twist truth until it fits its need for understanding. Humility, though confused and bewildered, says simply with the Psalmist in Psalm 86:8-11
“There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours. All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.” (emphasis mine)
Working with you to humbly pursue truth in its only revealed source,
Vince R.
A Woeful Decision in a Popular Ministry
July 9, 2008
As many of you know, I’m not a big fan of Rob Bell. I put that nicely. Here’s another reason why. http://www.theresurgence.org/jeff_robinson_2004_engaged_by_the_culture.
I’m quickly approaching the end. In fact, as I write this I still have two lesson plans to write that are due tomorrow. I’m speaking of my education class. Education 3302: Instructional Strategies. In a furious minimester of 12 days, I am having the Texas Education Agency shoved down my throat as I’m being taught how to survive the suffocation. Needless to say, I’ve gagged many times.
I’ve always had a disdain for the TEA, but I’ve never had it as much as I have now. However, this subject is not my point. Forget the way the No Child Left Behind Act takes teachers by the throat and shoves their noses in the feces of high school failures. “Bad teacher!”
This has to do with worldview clash.
I’ve learned about worldview this Summer in a savage way. Thanks to Dr. Mohler, whom I’ve taken the habit of listening to as much as I am able, I have learned, for the past month or so, some of the most tragic examples of the decadence of a post-Genesis 3 world. His Christian engagement with news bits and signs of the times have taken me from minor reactions of bothered tsks to major reactions of downright sorrow. I’m so burdened with what the future holds for God’s people. Especially…my own children. I’m actually frightened to place them in the public school system.
We will suffer: mark it. I’m not the one whose promised it. See II Timothy 3 and Matthew 24 and also the whole last book of the Bible.
Morever, as I’ve heard the ways my professor lines out for us to successfully ‘beat the man,’ as she so eloquently puts it with her Southern dialect (I absolutely love it, by the way!), I have experienced a heavy heart and even downright despair. The State is on its way to controlling everything. Satan controls the State.
Thanks be to God that the Cross of Christ is my victory. Thanks be to God that the king’s heart is like a stream in his hands. Otherwise, all my enemies would swallow me alive. When I gather myself after class, I tell myself to keep going and just take it one day at a time. (That’s always the key, my suffering brethren.) Sufficient for the day is its trouble.
One day, I know I will face a classroom of troubled young youths. The majority of their parents don’t care, the majority of student attitudes will reflect it. They will hate my subject and resent me for trying to teach it to them. But that’s not the part that burdens me.
What burdens me? The secularization of education has drained it of all semblance of its origin. Where did schools come from? What is the point of education? My heart tells me one thing, and you can see this on my facebook if you go there. It is a quote a friend shared with me, and it has captured me ever since.
“The chief design of your academic pursuits is to prepare you more extensively to glorify God in the salvation of sinners. Let this thought be the constant inmate of your soul. Let it rise up with you in the morning and lie down with you at night. Wherever you go, whatever you do, let it attend and direct you.”
-John Angell James
That’s the point of my existence: to make much of Christ so others can see and marval at Him. That’s it. That’s the chief end of education.
Sadly, however, in a fallen world, the lines are so hard to find. Satan prowls around seeking to devour me. That’s where my heart has been for the last 3 weeks: Running from Satan as he tries to steal my joy in God about my future.
Here is a blog published today (not coincidentally) by Dr. Mohler entitled Just What Are Schools to Do? The Aims and Purposes of Education. I knew I had to share it with you when I saw it. God seems to be working on me. http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=1183
But thanks be to God for relieving me this past Sunday. In twofold mediums, he set me free from the burden. Before church, I wanted to read the Morning devotional from Charles Spurgeon for July 6. I took it with me, and I read it aloud for my girlfriend and I as she drove us to the church building. It was the beginning of my liberty.
“Whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell in safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.” -Proverbs 1:33
“Divine love is rendered conspicuous when it shines in the midst of judgments. Fair is that lone star which smiles through the rifts of the thunder clouds; bright is the oasis which blooms in the wilderness of sand; so fair and so bright is love in the midst of wrath. When the Israelites provoked the Most High by their continued idolatry, He punished them by withholding both dew and rain, so that their land was visited by a sore famine; but while He did this, He took care that His own chosen ones should be secure. If all other brooks are dry, yet shall there be one reserved for Elijah; and when that fails, God shall still preserve for him a place of sustenance; nay, not only so, the Lord had not simply one ‘Elijah,’ but He had a remnant according to the election of grace, who were hidden by fifties in a cave, and though the whole land was subject to famine, yet these fifties in the cave were fed, and fed from Ahab’s table too by His faithful, God-fearing steward, Obadiah. Let us from this draw the inference, that come what may, God’s people are safe. Let convulsions shake the solid earth, let the skies themselves be rent in twain, yet amid the wreck of worlds the believer shall be as secure as in the calmest hour of rest. If God cannot save His people under heaven, He will save them in heaven. If the world becomes too hot to hold them, then heaven shall be the place of their reception and their safety. Be ye confident, when ye hear of wars, and rumours of wars. Let no agitation distress you, but be quiet from fear of evil. Whatsoever cometh upon the earth, you, beneath the broad wings of Jehovah, shall be secure. Stay yourself upon His promise; rest in His faithfulness, and bid defiance to the blackest future, for there is nothing in it direful for you. Your sole concern should be to show forth to the world the blessedness of hearkening to the voice of wisdom.”
Thank you Father, for using this Saint of old, to minister to my soul.
A quiet repetition of Van Deventer’s I Surrender All was the resolution of my liberty.
“All to Jesus I surrender;
all to him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust him,
in his presence daily live.
I surrender all, I surrender all,
all to thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.”
I was free…I am free.
Working with you to stand in defiance to the blackest future where no direful thing waits for God’s people,
Vince R.
Morning and Evening. Charles H. Spurgeon. Hendrickson Publishers. Feb. 2005, p. 376.
