Self-deception about Sin is a Narcotic

In his brief theology of sin, Not The Way It's Supposed To Be, Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. states that his goal is to renew our knowledge of the persistent reality of sin "that used to evoke in us fear, hatred, and grief."
Fear.
Hatred.
Grief.
Do these words describe your reaction to sin?
They should.

Plantinga goes on to lament and warn us:

Many of us have lost this knowledge, and we ought to regret the loss. For slippage in our consciousness of sin, like most fashionable follies, may be pleasant, but it is also devastating. Self-deception about our sin is a narcotic, a tranquilizing and disorienting suppression of our spiritual central nervous system. What's devastating about it is that when we lack an ear for wrong notes in our lives, we cannot play right ones or even recognize them in the performances of others. Eventually we make ourselves religiously so unmusical that we miss both the exposition and recapitulation of the main themes God plays in human life. The music of creation and the still greater music of grace whistle right through our skulls, causing no catch of breath and leaving no residue. Moral beauty begins to bore us. The idea that the human race needs a Saviour sounds quaint.
(Page xiii, emphasis added)

I often remind myself of the two theological pillars that hold up my worldview:
1) The holiness of God, and
2) The sinfulness of man.

In our Bibles we see both. And they feed off of one another.
The more holy I see my God, the more sinful I see myself.
The more sinful I see myself, the more gracious I see my God.
As the chasm grows wider between my sinful self and my holy God, the need for grace grows greater.
And grace is greater, because Christ is greater. Grace is great, because it comes through Christ.

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
(Romans 5:20-21 ESV, emphasis added)

So, do we need to heed Plantinga's warning and overcome the self-deception about sin? Must we really train our ears to hear the wrong notes (sin) in our lives? Absolutely. Perhaps the puritan Thomas Watson could sum it up best, "'Til sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet."

Out of the Mouths of Babes

I've had these gems documented for several years now.  These are all things my son said when he was around 3 years old (he's almost 11 now!).  

When Anita took Aaron Job and Abby to the park along with several other mothers & children from our church, Aaron Job noticed the absence of any men. He asked Anita, "Where are all the Daddies?" Anita explained, "Well, the daddies have to go to work to provide for their families." Aaron Job caught on quickly and added, "And the mommies go to jewelry parties!"

_______________

As we were pulling out of a gas station, Aaron Job saw some random man getting into his car.

Aaron Job: "Who's that?"
Me: "I don't know"
Aaron Job: "Is he nice?"
Me: "Well, I don't know."
Aaron Job: "If he trusts in the Lord, he can go to Heaven."

_______________

Praying before one evening meal, Aaron Job began thanking God for different people in our family (he rarely prays like this). After listing several people, he stopped and said a bit urgently, "Oh, I forgot something!" We all pause, waiting for him to perhaps mention another family member that slipped his mind... he then said,
"I don't have a drink!"

Anita: "I'll get your drink Aaron Job, but you need to finish praying first."
Aaron Job: "Otay. Amen."

_______________

As hard as it may be to believe, sometimes 3 year old boys don't like to take naps in the afternoon. So when Aaron Job would take a good nap, Anita was sure to praise him.

One afternoon, after such a good, long nap, Anita began her accolades to her son:

Anita: "Good boy, Aaron Job! You slept really good, you didn't get out of bed, you didn't make any noise..."
Aaron Job (interrupting): "And I didn't poopoo in my underwear!!"

_______________

We'd been trying to sell our house for a couple of months. We found a house we really liked, at a good price, and it happened to have one of those nice swing sets made of the heavy timbers. Aaron Job played on it while we toured the home.

So one night we were praying that God might allow us to get this house. We reminded Aaron Job of the house and the swing set - which got him excited. We suggested that he should pray and ask the Lord if He would please give us this house. So he did with a nice, simple prayer:

"Lord, would you please give us this house with the slide?"

After a few seconds, he cracked open one of his eyes and looked at me and asked: "What'd He say?"

Are You Astonished at the Difference?

I'm half-way through Stephen Altrogge's book, The Greener Grass Conspiracy: Finding contentment on Your Side of the Fence.  All's I can say is... My.  Oh.  My.  It's inwardly revealing, personally convicting, and so Gospel exalting.

At the end of a chapter that discussed contentment within the context of the sin of complaining, Altrogge walks the reader through the glorious Gospel truths to remind of all we have been given in Christ.  He begins concluding the chapter with these words about contentment:

The gospel of Christ is the fountainhead of contentment. In the gospel we have access to infinite blessings.  But if we don't drink often we will always be thirsty.  The moment I feel the saltwater-like thirst of discontentment, I need to plunge again in the gospel.

 He continues with a summary of complaining:

Complaining is almost always rooted in a faulty sense of rights and privileges.  Each of us has a lengthy list of things that we think we deserve....But the gospel makes it very clear that the only thing we truly deserve is  hell.... God owes us nothing except justice.  The fires of hell would be the right destination for ungrateful, arrogant rebels like us....On our worst days we're always doing infinitely better than we deserve.

Finally, he ends with this jaw dropping quote from The Valley of Vision (a book of Puritan prayers):

O Lord, I am astonished at the difference
between my receivings and my deservings,
between the state I am now in and my past gracelessness,
between the heaven I am bound for and the hell I merit.

O that such a crown should fit the head of such a sinner!
such high advancement be for an unfruitful person!
such joys for so vile a rebel!

Taken from The Valley of Vision, "The Mover"

Finding it difficult to be content?  Finding it easy to complain about such petty things?  Even significant things?  Christian, remember what we deserve.   And consider what we've received.

Equal, Protected, and Near His Heart

So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,      

     “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
      she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

Genesis 2:22-23 ESV

That the woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.

~Matthew Henry, Commentary on Genesis

It Cannot Be Done

Jesus deals with us in absolute categories. Jesus promised His disciples the hatred and persecution of the world (John 15:18-23). But He also promised His disciples eternal life (John 3:16). His offer is: persecution and hatred of the world and eternal life, or the love of the world and eternal death. At this point we try to negotiate. Can’t we be popular and still be His followers? Can’t we fit in and get along and still be Christians? The answer is no. It cannot be done. Give the world and its treasures a place in your heart, and they will take over. The Apostle John writes, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15b). Similarly James writes, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4).

Terry Johnson, The Parables of Jesus (Christian Focus)

Blinded By Satan

I'm reading Martin Luther's "Bondage of the Will" as an assignment for Dr. Zemek's theology class.  Every now and then I come across a section that I actually understand! :)  In this passage Luther reminds us not only of the unbeliever's wretchedness, but also Satan's work of blinding them to this wretchedness. 

But the Scripture sets before us a man who is not only bound, wretched, captive, sick and dead, but who, through the operation of Satan his lord, adds to his other miseries that of blindness so that he believes himself to be free, happy, possessed of liberty and ability, whole and alive. Satan knows that if men knew their own misery he could keep no man in his kingdom; God could not fail at once to pit and succour wretchedness that knew itself and cried to Him, for God is proclaimed with mighty praise throughout the Scripture as being near to the brokenhearted. Thus Isaiah 61 bears witness that Christ was sent ‘to preach the gospel to the poor, and to heal the broken-hearted’. Hence, the work of Satan is to hold men so that they do not recognize their wretchedness, but presume that they can do everything that is stated. But the work of Moses the lawgiver is the opposite of this—namely, through the law to lay open to man his own wretchedness, so that, by thus breaking him down, and confounding him in his self-knowledge, he may make him ready for grace, and send him to Christ to be saved. Therefore, the function performed by the law is nothing to laugh at, but is most emphatically serious and necessary.
(Bondage of the Will, Martin Luther.  Baker Book House, 162)

To make things worse, Satan not only blinds men to their ultimate problem he also blinds them to their only solution - the Gospel!

2 Corinthians 4:3-4
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing.  In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.  

Thanks be to God the verse doesn't end there...

2 Corinthians 4:5-6
For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake.  For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

And this eye-opening work of God is not just a New Testament idea either...

Psalm 146:7b-8
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.

Have your eyes been opened? Then rejoice in bewildered amazement as the healed man did in John 9, "...though I was blind, now I see."

This post swiped from www.bclrblog.org.

Crippled Saints

When new Christians are not adequately taught the Word of God, they naturally devise their own standards, their own regulations, and their own systems of religious experience. Rampant legalism and complex religiosity are but symptoms of a more severe disease called Bible anemia. Crippled saints will manufacture crooked canes on which to lean while they hobble through life. God-starved believers will sacrifice their prized possessions to forge some golden calf that they can see and worship. Blinded Christian neophytes will grope for a leader and will embrace anyone who comes along.
~J. Ronald Blue, Overcoming the World Missions Crisis

The Law and the Gospel

Then he took him by the hand, and led him into a very large parlor that was full of dust, because never swept; the which after he had reviewed it a little while, the Interpreter called for a man to sweep. Now, when he began to sweep, the dust began so abundantly to fly about, that Christian had almost therewith been choked. Then said the Interpreter to a damsel that stood by, “Bring hither water, and sprinkle the room;” the which when she had done, it was swept and cleansed with pleasure.

Christian: Then said Christian, What means this?

Interpreter: The Interpreter answered, This parlor is the heart of a man that was never sanctified by the sweet grace of the Gospel. The dust is his original sin, and inward corruptions, that have defiled the whole man. He that began to sweep at first, is the law; but she that brought water, and did sprinkle it, is the Gospel. Now whereas thou sawest, that so soon as the first began to sweep, the dust did so fly about that the room by him could not be cleansed, but that thou wast almost choked therewith; this is to show thee, that the law, instead of cleansing the heart (by its working) from sin, doth revive, Romans 7:9, put strength into, 1 Corinthians 15:56, and increase it in the soul, Romans 5:20, even as it doth discover and forbid it; for it doth not give power to subdue. Again, as thou sawest the damsel sprinkle the room with water, upon which it was cleansed with pleasure, this is to show thee, that when the Gospel comes in the sweet and precious influences thereof to the heart, then, I say, even as thou sawest the damsel lay the dust by sprinkling the floor with water, so is sin vanquished and subdued, and the soul made clean, through the faith of it, and consequently fit for the King of glory to inhabit. John 15:3; Ephesians 5:26; Acts 15:9; Romans 16:25,26.

~John Bunyan, Pilgrims Progress

Worship & Judgment in the book of the Revelation

As a Christian book, the Apocalypse is characterized by song and worship. While portraying judgment upon sin, a note of joy and praise is heard repeatedly. Some twenty songs of praise and worship are recorded in it. Saints and angels, as well as all nature, are pictured as sharing in the worship of God and the Lamb. The worship is joyous and wholehearted. A number of the songs record the reactions of the witnesses to the just judgments of God being poured out upon an evil world.
It insists that the only proper object of man's worship is God (19:10; 22:9). Both men and angels joyfully unite in their worship of the Lamb of God (5:8-14). The book also shows and denounces wrong worship. It castigates all idolatry and shows that the worship of any man or of Satan will be judged. Worship of the beast and his image is a special object of warning.

D. Edmond Hiebert, An Introduction to the New Testament: Three Volume Collection. Volume 3. (Waynesboro, Georgia: Gabriel Publishing, 2003)

No Heroic Defiance

"Create in me and in your church a sense of profound respect for questions of conscience. We are so lax. We have nothing of a watchman mentality. We trumpet our freedom in the gospel, but our living looks more like an easygoing indifference to matters of right and wrong. Lord, we even feel superior to previous generations of believers, who at least took moral questions seriously. We view their faith as strict and narrow. But we ourselves are so soft, so casually compliant, so unthinking and undiscerning and uncaring, we are no different from the world around us. We are the influenced, not the influential, because our faith has no moral power, no unbending resolve, no heroic defiance grounded in profoundly held personal conviction. O Lord, awaken us! Enlighten our darkness. Sensitize our dullness. Give us backbone. The world will never be won by Christians like us. "

~Ray Ortlund, Jr., A Passion for God: Prayers and Meditations on the Book of Romans

Forsaken of God

"Here we are the spectators of a wonder the praise and glory of which eternity will not exhaust. It is the Lord of glory, the Son of God incarnate, the God-man, drinking the cup given him by the eternal Father, the cup of woe and of indescribable agony. We almost hesitate to say so. But it must be said.

It is God in our nature forsaken of God.

The cry from the accursed tree evinces nothing less than the abandonment that is the wages of sin. And it was abandonment endured vicariously because he bore our sins in his own body on the tree.

There is no analogy.

He himself bore our sins and of the people there was none with him.

There is no reproduction or parallel in the experience of archangels or of the greatest saints. The faintest parallel would crush the holiest of men and the mightiest of the angelic host."

Redemption Accomplished and Applied
John Murray
(emphasis mine)

Thoughts for the Unbeliever

Just sent to me from a friend...

THOUGHTS FOR THE UNBELIEVER
By the (late) Reverend James Montgomery Boice, Th.D.

1. If there is no God, then I am a law unto myself and can do as I please. But of course, life then has no more meaning than I can give to it, and there is nothing beyond. If there is a God, then I am made like Him and owe Him a corresponding allegiance and worship. My problem begins with the realization that I have not done that and must therefore be the object of His great displeasure.

2. If there is a God, that God has either revealed Himself or He has not. If He has not, I am back in the same place as if there was no God, for all practical purposes. On the other hand, if God has revealed Himself (as we have every right to expect He would do), then it is my duty to seek out that revelation and make my way to Him. My problem is compounded by that duty because I have not sought Him. On the contrary, I have run from Him and have tried every means to banish His presence and influence from my life.

3. Jesus may be just another religious teacher. If so, His teachings can be used or not, as they prove helpful or unhelpful. But if He is more than a religious teacher, if He is God come in human flesh, as He claimed, then His teachings demand more than just a casual perusal. They demand belief and obedience. I am in trouble here because I have not believed in Him or obeyed Him.

4. If Jesus is not God, then His death and His teachings about its meaning are unimportant, though they were obviously important to Him. But if he is God, then His death is of the utmost importance. He taught – and He must be believed if he is God – that no one will ever be saved who does not believe that he died in the his place to satisfy the just wrath of God against the sinner. That means that if I have not believed in Jesus as my Savior, I am doomed to suffer for my own sins when I eventually appear before God to give an accounting of all I have done or failed to do.5. If there is a heaven and a hell, it is only common sense and enlightened self-interest for me to do everything I can do to gain the former and avoid the latter.

Pronounced: tsid-kay'-noo

“Jehovah Tsidkenu”

( Jeremiah 33:16 )

which means
“The Lord Our Righteousness”

by Robert Murray McCheyne

November 18, 1884

I once was a stranger to grace and to God,
I knew not my danger; and felt not my load;
Though friends spoke in rapture of Christ on the tree,
Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me.

I oft read with pleasure, to soothe or engage,
Isaiah’s wild measure and John’s simple page;
But even when they pictured the blood-sprinkled tree,
Jehovah Tsidkenu seemed nothing to me.

Like tears from the daughters of Zion that roll,
I wept when the waters went over His soul,
Yet thought not that my sins had nailed to the tree
Jehovah Tsidkenu — ’twas nothing to me.

When free grace awoke me by light from on high,
Then legal fears shook me, I trembled to die;
No refuge, no safety in self could I see —
Jehovah Tsidkenu my Saviour must be.

My terrors all vanished before the sweet name;
My guilty fear banished, with boldness I came
To drink at the fountain, life-giving and free—
Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me.

Jehovah Tsidkenu! My treasure and boast,
Jehovah Tsidkenu! I ne’er can be lost;
In Thee shall I conquer by flood and by field—
My cable, my anchor, my breastplate and shield!

Even treading the valley; the shadow of death,
This “watchword” shall rally my faltering breath;
For while from life’s fever my God sets me free,
Jehovah Tsidkenu my death-song shall be.

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’

Jeremiah 23:5-6

Pronounced: tsid-kay'-noo

The Reformation Re-visited

Having recently celebrated it and yet failed to blog anything about it, I'll simply ask a quick question:

What was the central issue of the Reformation of 1517?

James White says, according to Luther himself, it was "God's absolute freedom and man's absolute dependence..."

Quoting Luther's Bondage of the Will:

For if we believe it to be true, that God fore-knows and fore-ordains all things; that He can be neither deceived nor hindered in His Prescience and Predestination; and that nothing can take place but according to His Will, (which reason herself is compelled to confess;) then, even according the the testimony of reason herself, there can be no "Free-will" - in man, - in angel - or in any creature!...In this, morevover, I give you (Erasmus) great praise, and proclaim it - you alone in pre-eminient distinction from all others, have entered upon the thing itself; that is, the grand turning point of the cause; and have not wearied me with those irrelelvant points about popery, purgatory, indulgences, and other like baubles, rahter than causes, with which all have hitherto tried to hunt me down, - though in vain! You, and you alone saw, what was the grand hinge upon which the whole turned, and therefore you attacked the vital part at once; for which, from my heart, I thank you. (emphasis added)

The "cause"...the "whole", James White suggests, is the Reformation!

Oh, then he quotes this from one of Spurgeon's sermons...it's great!

There is no attribute of God more comforting to his children than the doctrine of Divine Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe troubles, they believe that Sovereignty hath ordained their afflictions, that sovereignty overrules them, and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all. There is nothing for which the children of God ought more earnestly to contend than the dominion of their Master over all creation—the kingship of God over all the works of his own hands—the throne of God, and his right to sit upon that throne. On the other hand, there is no doctrine more hated by worldlings, no truth of which they have made such a foot-ball, as the great, stupendous, but yet most certain doctrine of the Sovereignty of the infinite Jehovah. Men will allow God to be everywhere except on his throne. They will allow him to be in his workshop to fashion worlds and to make stars. They will allow him to be in his almonry to dispense his alms and bestow his bounties. They will allow him to sustain the earth and bear up the pillars thereof, or light the lamps of heaven, or rule the waves of the ever-moving ocean; but when God ascends his throne, his creatures then gnash their teeth; and when we proclaim an enthroned God, and his right to do as he wills with his own, to dispose of his creatures as he thinks well, without consulting them in the matter, then it is that we are hissed and execrated, and then it is that men turn a deaf ear to us, for God on his throne is not the God they love. They love him anywhere better than they do when he sits with his sceptre in his hand and his crown upon his head. But it is God upon the throne that we love to preach. It is God upon his throne whom we trust.

[Both quotations found in James White's, The Potter's Freedom, 2000 Calvary Press]

Quotables, Revelations, Miracles and an Ugly Pastor from the 17th Century

I was just introduced to a small treasure of widely ranging resources hosted by Bo Salisbury, a new visitor at iamchief.

Check out his helpful Christian Quotes site

OR

his blog that extends his Revelation Bible study to any who'd like to drop in.

OR

his own biography of the "Reformed Pastor", Richard Baxter

OR (I said this was widely ranged, didn't I?)

Salisbury's testimony of God's miraculous, healing grace during a life threatening fight with Necrotizing Fasciitis.

Oh yeah...and pygmies.

Enjoy.

Dead Man Talking - Number Two

The following is from Spurgeon's sermon,
"THE BEST BELOVED"

No words can ever express the gratitude we owe to Him who
loved us even when we were dead in trespasses and sins.

The love of Jesus is unutterably precious,
and worthy of daily praise.

No songs can ever fitly celebrate the triumphs of that
salvation which he wrought single-handed on our behalf.

The work of Jesus is glorious beyond all comparison, and
all the harps of angels fall short of its worthy honor.

We prize his bounty to us, but we worship HIM.

His gifts are valued, but he himself is adored.

While we contemplate, with mingled feelings of awe,
admiration, and thankfulness, his atonement, his resurrection,
his glory in heaven, and his second coming, still it is Christ
himself, stupendous in his dignity as the Son of God,
and superbly beautiful as the Son of man, who sheds an
incomparable charm on all those wonderful achievements,
wherein his might and his merit, his goodness and his
grace appear so conspicuous.

For HIM let our choicest spices be reserved,
and to HIM let our sweetest anthems be raised.

Our choicest ointment must be poured upon his head, and for his
own self alone our most costly alabaster boxes must be broken.

"He is altogether lovely."

Not only is his teaching attractive, his doctrine persuasive,
his life irreproachable, his character enchanting, and his work
a self-denying labor for the common good of all his people,
but he himself is altogether lovely.

Do not look for anything lovely outside of Jesus,
for he has all the loveliness.

All perfections are in him making up one consummate
perfection; and all the loveliness which is to be seen
elsewhere is but a reflection of his own unrivalled charms.

Jesus is the monopolizer of all loveliness.
He is the engrosser of all that is admirable in the entire universe.

Dead Man Talking - Number One

This will be the first of an ongoing - although somewhat infrequent - series of blog entries from great men who have walked with the Lord here on earth, and are now walking with the Lord in Heaven. It's a shame, but often the best preachers today can only be heard through their books, for they have long gone before us. Let us now hear from A. W. Pink:

"THE WAY OF SALVATION"
by A.W. Pink

What must I do to be saved?
Saved from what?
What is it You wish to be saved from?
Hell?
That proves nothing.
Nobody wants to go there.
The issue between God and man is SIN.
Do you wish to be saved from it?

What is sin?
Sin is a species of rebellion against God.
It is self-pleasing; it is the utter ignoring of God's claims,
being completely indifferent
whether my conduct pleases or displeases Him.

Before God saves a man, He convicts him of his 'sinnership'.

By this I do not mean that he says with everybody else,
"Oh yes, we are all sinners, I know that."

Rather do I mean that the Holy Spirit makes me feel in my heart
that I have been a life-long rebel against God,
and that my sins are so many, so great, so black, that I fear
that I have transgressed beyond the reach of divine mercy.

Have you ever had that experience?
Have you seen yourself to be totally unfit for heaven?
-and unfit for the presence of a Holy God?

Do you now perceive that there is no good thing in you,
nothing good credited to your account,
that all the way through life, you have loved the things God hates,
and hated the things God loves?

Has the realization of this broken your heart before God?
Has it made you MOURN that you have so despised His mercies,
misused His blessings, neglected His word, and given Him
no real place at all in your thoughts, affections and life?

If you have not yet seen and felt this personally,
then at present there is no hope for you, for God says,
"Except you repent, you shall all likewise perish." -Luke 13:3
And if you die in your present condition, you will be lost forever.

But if you have been brought to the place where sin is your
greatest plague, where offending God is your greatest grief,
and where your deepest desire is now to please and honor Him,
then there is hope for you.

"The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was LOST"
(Luke 19:10). And He will save you, providing you are ready
and willing to throw down the weapons of your warfare against
Him, bow to His Lordship, and surrender yourself to His
control.

His blood can wash the foulest clean.
His grace can support and uphold the weakest.
His power can deliver the tried and tempted.

"Behold NOW is the accepted time; behold,
NOW is the day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:2).

Yield yourself to Christ's claims.
Give Him the throne of your heart.
Turn over to Him the regulation of your life.
Trust in His atoning death.
Love Him with all your soul.
Obey Him with all your might
and He will conduct you to heaven.

"Believe on the LORD Jesus Christ and you shall be saved" (Acts 16:31)