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New Year’s Resolutions

By on January 1, 2013 in Bible and Theology, Current Events

1) Resolved: in stray and sundry moments when I find myself waiting in line or sitting in traffic, to meditate on the Scripture I know and seek to apply it to life rather than fretting about the way I could be using that time to study more Scripture.

2) Resolved: to obey Deuteronomy 6 and repeat the words of the Bible to my children when we rise up and lie down, when we sit in the house and walk by the way, and to talk with them about the truths of holy Writ.

3) Resolved: in view of the fact that marriage is a mini-drama of the gospel, to love my wife as Christ has loved the church, as this is the epic adventure of my life.

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I wrote these for Towers for New Year’s Day 2012 and now post them here.

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Through the Prince Not Proud

By on December 25, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Jesus

The one who gave life, entered into life.
The one who spoke the curse of death took the curse of death.
The one who defines good and evil, who is nothing but good, took evil on himself.
The holy one gave himself for the unholy,
The righteous for the unrighteous,
The undying for the dead.

The Son of God became a son of man
So the sons of men could become sons of God.

The one who made everything was unmade so that we might be remade.
The Creator entered the creation to be killed by creatures so he could roll back death and bring about the new creation.

Death could not hold him.
Sin could not stain him.
Hell will not stand against him.
You will not outrun him.

Jesus will reign!

God has answered Satan’s shout of triumph with the baby’s cry.

God has brought proud Satan low

through the prince not proud
born on the night not silent
in the stable not clean
to the heir not honored
with majesty not recognized
by those who will not repent
but beheld by those who are naught in the eyes of the world.

The babe has been born
The dragon defeated
Salvation accomplished
Good news has come
Will you believe it?

The word became flesh, and tabernacled among us. We have seen his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

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What Jesus Is

By on December 24, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Jesus

The baby in the manger is the lynchpin of the fulfillment of God’s promises.
The whole Bible hangs on that baby born of Mary.
God’s faithfulness depends on that boy’s life.
God’s faithfulness is shown in that man’s death.
God’s faithfulness is sealed in his resurrection.

Jesus is everything to us.

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What Jesus Did at the Incarnation

By on December 23, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Jesus

The infinite, unlimited one, became finite and took the limitations of a baby.
The immortal, undying one, became mortal and took a body that could die.
The omnipresent, everywhere one, located himself in one spot.
The invisible, unseen one, became visible and his glory was beheld.
The all wise, all knowing one, learned obedience and laid aside omniscience.

 

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Logos 5 is Live

By on November 2, 2012 in Bible and Theology

Logos 5 has released and has a crisp new look and feel. You can find out more about what’s new on their site and in this video:

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New Post at Christianity.Com: Intended Allegory in the Song of Songs?

By on September 4, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology

Over at Christianity.Com I ask whether there is exegetical evidence that Solomon intended an allegorical layer of meaning in the Song of Songs. Here’s the opening:

For a number of years now learned interpreters of Scripture have been telling us that the Song of Songs is (primarily) about human love. I put the word primarily in parentheses in that last sentence for a reason. I had grown so accustomed to the emphasis on human love in the Song that I had begun to assume that’s all modern commentators said about it. As I was recently pondering this, I went back and looked at what they actually say. They typically add a word like “primarily” or “mainly,” leaving the door open to a spiritual meaning of the Song. But then when the get into it, all they talk about is human love.

In this post I want to pose a question: is it possible that Solomon intended the Song to have an allegorical layer of meaning?

Usually when you suggest that the Song is about something more than human love, people roll their eyes and write you off as a prude.

I’m not a prude, okay?

I do think the Song is about human love, and I think human love is great. Really great! I love my wife, and I can’t get over God giving us something so surprising, so pleasing, so good as marriage. Everything that happens within the context of this comprehensive interpersonal union of one man and one woman being one flesh is better than any of the perversions people use to ruin it. So I’m on board with human love in the Song.

My question, though, is whether there’s more to the Song than merely human love, more that Solomon, whom I take to have written the Song (cf. Song 1:1), intended his audience to get from this piece of poetry. I’m not out to defend the history of interpretation by asking this question, but it is worth observing that the idea that the Song has a spiritual meaning has been, well, dominant across the ages. Is there exegetical evidence for it, though?

I consider the exegetical evidence in the rest of the post.

Related: I’m preaching through the Song at Kenwood, and the sermons are on this page.

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Typology Preserves Biblical Inerrancy Against Ehrman’s Mistake

By on August 29, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology, Inerrancy

Bart Ehrman describes why he left the faith in his book Misquoting Jesus (8–9):

A turning point came in my second semester . . . . we had to write a final term paper on an interpretive crux of our own choosing. I chose a passage in Mark 2, where Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees because his disciples had been walking through a grain field, eating the grain on the Sabbath. Jesus wants to show the Pharisees that “Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath” and so reminds them of what the great King David had done when he and his men were hungry, how they went into the Temple “when Abiathar was the high priest” and at the show bread, which was only for the priests to eat. One of the well-known problems of the passage is that when one looks at the Old Testament passage that Jesus is citing (1 Sam. 21:1–6), it turns out that David did this not when Abiathar was the high priest, but, in fact, when Abiathar’s father Ahimelech was. In other words, this is one of those passages that have been pointed to in order to show that the Bible is not inerrant at all but contains mistakes.

In my paper for Professor Story, I developed a long and complicated argument to the effect that even though Mark indicates this happened “when Abiathar was the high priest,” it doesn’t really mean that Abiathar was the high priest, but that the event took place in the part of the scriptural text that has Abiathar as one of the main characters. My argument was based on the meaning of the Greek words involved and was a bit convoluted. I was pretty sure Professor Story would appreciate the argument, since I knew him as a good Christian scholar who obviously (like me) would never think there could be anything like a genuine error in the Bible. But at the end of my paper he made a simple one-line comment that for some reason went straight through me. He wrote: “Maybe Mark just made a mistake.” I started thinking about it, considering all the work I had put into the paper, realizing that I had had to do some pretty fancy exegetical footwork to get around the problem, and that my solution was in fact a bit of a stretch. I finally concluded, “Hmm . . . maybe Mark did make a mistake.”

Once I made that admission, the floodgates opened. For if there could be one little, picayune mistake in Mark 2, maybe there could be mistakes in other places as well. . . .

I am convinced that Ehrman is mistaken, not Mark. In the passage Ehrman describes, Mark 2:23–28, Mark presents Jesus making a sophisticated interpretive connection by using the name “Abiathar.” That is, neither Mark nor Jesus is in error. Rather, Mark is presenting Jesus using the name Abiathar in the service of a wider, typological connection. I would invite you to consider the questions I ask about this passage in “The Typology of David’s Rise to Power” (13):

Much discussion has been generated by the fact that Mark 2:26 portrays Jesus referring to “the time of Abiathar the high priest,” when it appears that at the time, Ahimelech would have been the high priest. Goppelt simply asserts: “Mark says Abiathar, but that is an error.”[1] But perhaps there are typological forces at work here, too. David did interact with Ahimelech in 1 Samuel 21:1–9, but Abiathar is the priest who escapes from Doeg’s slaughter (22:20). Could the reference to Abiathar be intentional? Could Mark be presenting Jesus as intentionally alluding to Abiathar’s escape from the slaughter of the priests ordered by Saul and carried out by Doeg the Edomite? Could this be a subtle way for Jesus to remind the Pharisees (“Have you never read,” Mark 2:25) that the opposition to David was wicked and murderous? If this is so, the typological connection suggested by the reference to Abiathar in Mark might be that just as Saul and Doeg opposed David and Abiathar’s household, so also the Pharisees are opposing Jesus and his followers.[2]

In the wider context of this paragraph I discuss the flow of the passage in Samuel and the kind of interpretation Mark presents. Thanks to the generosity of The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, a PDF of the essay is free to you.


[1] Goppelt, Typos, 85 n. 106.

[2] Having come to this position, I was pleased to find a similar suggestion in Rikk E. Watts, “Mark,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), 141: “If the point is to establish an authoritative precedent, then the actions of Abiathar, as Ahimelech’s son, in taking the ephod to David to become his chief priest and subsequent blessing underscore God’s affirmation of Ahimelech’s decision, his presence with David, and his abandonment of David’s opponent Saul. Not only are Jesus’ disciples justified, but also to oppose them (and, of course, Jesus) is to oppose both ‘David’ and ultimately God, who vindicated him and will also vindicate Jesus.”

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Chiasms on the Brain?

By on August 28, 2012 in Art, Bible and Theology

I was recently asked some questions about chiasms: Are biblical scholars just bored and seeing things? Would ancient audiences have picked up on them? Is this a widely attested ancient Near Eastern device? Do lay Bible readers have any hope of seeing them or must they consult commentaries?

These are good questions. There are biblical scholars who are very suspicious of chiasms, especially of larger proposals that stretch over whole sections of texts or even whole books. I come down with those who see chiasms as a key structuring device in ancient literature. I would add that it’s not just ancient literature. I think it was a prof I had in college, Skip Hays, who suggested that The Great Gatsby has a paneled structure that is basically chiastic. There are plenty of examples of balanced structures in the world’s literature. Think of the Divine Comedy . . .

Anyway, in a world that didn’t use chapters, chapter titles (the chapter and verse numbers in the Bible were added later–they don’t come from the biblical authors), bold subheadings, and italics, authors seem to have employed chiastic structures, inclusios, and other devices that rely on the repetition of key words, phrases, or thematic concepts to structure their material.

There is evidence that early on the biblical texts were widely memorized, as well as evidence that they were regularly read aloud. I think it plausible that authors expected their audiences to recognize chiastic structures and inclusios formed by the repetition of key words, phrases, and concepts, and if they weren’t caught on first hearing (those accustomed to listening closely to texts being read aloud probably had more facility for hearing such things–I notice that my sons, who have heard us read aloud to them a lot, seem to catch more from a first reading than my wife and I sometimes do) they could be noticed in the memorization/meditation/recitation process.

This is not limited to the ANE, though, because chiasms are also widely attested in the NT. I see a chiastic structure in the whole book of Revelation.

A proposed chiasm is either convincing or unconvincing, isn’t it? We’re dealing with those points on the scale from impossible to unlikely to implausible to possible to plausible to likely to certain . . . Sometimes chiasms are more apparent if the texts are read in the original Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, though if you’re reading a more literal translation you might still pick it up if you’re paying close attention and thinking hard about how the text hangs together. I think if you were to study a text really closely or memorize it in something like the NASB or ESV or NKJV, you might notice a chiastic structure . . . so commentaries are not the layperson’s only hope of seeing the structure that is there.

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The Typology of David’s Rise to Power: Messianic Patterns in the Book of Samuel

By on August 27, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology, Typology

What is Typology? How do the biblical authors develop typological connections?

Can we read the Bible the way the biblical authors did?

These are some of the questions I seek to address in an essay that has just appeared in The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. Thanks to the generosity of the editor, Steve Wellum (author of, with Peter Gentry, Kingdom through Covenant) and SBTS, I have permission to post a PDF of the essay here:

“The Typology of David’s Rise to Power: Messianic Patterns in the Book of Samuel,” SBJT 16.2 (2012): 4–25.

This essay has a history that I want to record. I can remember teaching the book of Acts in Sunday School at Clifton Baptist Church in Louisville when I was a PhD student at SBTS. This was around 2002–2003. I needed the categories and language of typology, but I had neither. Over and over I felt that I could see Luke doing what I would now describe as typology, but I was at a loss to describe it well. It’s really wonderful what knowing the right word for the right thing will enable you to say.

In 2005 I began to work on a project that was eventually published as “The Virgin Will Conceive: Typological Fulfillment in Matthew 1:18–23,” pages 228–47 in Built upon the Rock: Studies in the Gospel of Matthew, ed. John Nolland and Dan Gurtner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). As I was working on what Matthew meant when he claimed fulfillment of Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:18–23, I found my way into the field of typology, and what really introduced me to it was E. Earle Ellis’s Foreword to Leonhard Goppelt’s book Typos.

It was my privilege to preach through 1–2 Samuel at Baptist Church of the Redeemer from July 2006 to January of 2008, and as I worked through Samuel I saw many places where NT authors seemed to have been influenced by the patterns in the book of Samuel. In late January or early February of 2008, while teaching at SWBTS Houston, I was invited to present a Julius Brown Gay lecture at Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY. I decided to use my acquaintance with the book of Samuel gained from preaching the book and do more exploration in the field of typology, so I wrote the essay that is the subject of this post at that time. I presented it as a Julius Brown Gay lecture at Southern Seminary on March 13, 2008. The audio of that presentation (which is me basically reading most of this essay) is here. I was then invited to join the faculty of SBTS, which I was honored to do in August of 2008.

That winter Steve Wellum, editor of SBJT, wanted to publish “The Typology of David’s Rise” with a response from Robert Yarbrough. There was a mixup of communication (for which I’m happy to claim responsibility), and instead of giving Dr. Wellum this essay I wrote another one, “Was Joseph a Type of the Messiah? Tracing the Typological Identification between Joseph, David, and Jesus,” SBJT 12.4 (2008), 52–77. I’m sorry for the mixup in communication, but I’m grateful that I had an opportunity to explore these typological connections further. Writing “Was Joseph a Type?” certainly clarified my own thinking.

Writing is perhaps the best way to learn. Nothing clarifies a concept or thought process in your own mind like the challenge of thinking out exactly what you are trying to say and how to say it.

Because of the way that Earle Ellis introduced me to the subject of typology through his preface to Goppelt’s book and his many other writings, and in gratitude for the kindness he showed me when I was his junior colleague on the SWBTS faculty, I dedicated the lecture, now published as an essay, to him. He died on March 2, 2010.

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to be one of the faculty on SWBTS’s Oxford Study Tour in the summer of 2005, and Dr. Ellis led our tour of the British Museum. Jason Duesing took this photo of us at that time.

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In Houston October 1–6, 2012

By on August 24, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology, Current Events, Discipleship, Jesus

My sweet wife grew up in Houston, and then when I finished my PhD at SBTS in 2003, the Lord opened a door for me to teach at the Houston campus of Southwestern Seminary. I had the privilege of teaching there from 2003–2008. In January of 2004 I was ordained to gospel ministry by Providence Baptist Church in Houston, and then in 2005 I was blessed to get involved with the core group of people planting what has become Baptist Church of the Redeemer. It was my privilege to help pastor that flock with some dear fellow-elders from 2005–2008.  We loved Houston because we loved the people of God we had the joy of walking with there, and the Lord’s people there loved us so well.

So getting to go back to Houston feels a bit like going home. My brother and his wife and their new baby even live there!

All this makes me delighted to have the opportunity to teach a class on the Gospel of John at The Bible Seminary in Katy, TX, just west of Houston. The class will meet Monday through Friday, October 1–5, from 8:15am until 4:30pm. If you’re looking to spend a week in the Word, I’d love to see you there.

Then that Friday night, October 5, and Saturday morning, October 6, I’ll be doing three sessions on Biblical Theology at the recently planted Christ Community Church. Lord willing, we’ll be looking at the Song of Songs in biblical theology, then motherhood in biblical theology, then fatherhood in biblical theology.

If you’re in the Houston area (or if you’re within driving distance of Houston!) and we had the joy of interacting there, please consider this an invitation, yea, a plea, old friend. Let’s reconnect – it would be great to spend the week in the Word with you at The Bible Seminary, and then what a privilege to think together about marriage and parenting in biblical theology at Christ Community Church. I would be thrilled to reconnect with you.

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Congrats to Andy Naselli on From Typology to Doxology

By on August 7, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Biblical Theology, For God's Glory in Christ by the Spirit, OT in the NT, Typology

My good friend Andy Naselli recently completed his second Phd. The first one was done at Bob Jones in Theology and resulted in an important book entitled Let Go and Let God? A Survey and Analysis of Keswick Theology. The second one was done at Trinity under D. A. Carson, and it has now been published as From Typology to Doxology: Paul’s Use of Isaiah and Job in Romans 11:34–35.

This book results from a whole host of good things: Andy is one of the brightest scholars I know, works as hard as anyone I’ve ever met, is one of the most organized men in the world, and he wrote this book on a superlative text under the supervision of the wise, learned, and godly Carson.

I was honored that Andy invited me to write a foreword for the published version of the dissertation, and I’m grateful for permission from both author and publisher to post that foreword here:

The book you hold in your hands deserves close attention for several reasons: it treats a climactic passage in what may be the most important letter ever written by one of the world’s most influential authors. Moreover, in Romans 11:33–36 Paul himself quotes two other great texts, the books of Job and Isaiah. In addition to the significance of the material treated, Andy Naselli’s treatment is notable: this book explains the use Paul makes of Isaiah 40:13 and Job 41:3 in Romans 11:34–35, and the explanation is as insightful and responsible as it is daring and exciting.

It’s not hard to imagine a published dissertation being responsible and insightful, but daring and exciting? Indeed.

Exciting precisely because Andy Naselli dares to understand. The daring claims made here are that Paul gets the Old Testament right; that as Paul quotes the Old Testament, his citations invoke broader passages, and that the flow of thought in those broader passages corresponds to the argument Paul makes. Insight and courage ignite Naselli’s bold contention that Paul’s use of these texts cues us to a wider typological connection that Paul sees between what Isaiah said to the nation of Israel, the experience of Job, and what Paul says the Jewish people will experience in the future. The wood of Naselli’s scholarship, arranged with rigorous care, has been set aflame by his sympathetic analysis of Paul’s perspective, resulting in a sacrifice of praise with a pleasing aroma. Accounting for all the evidence, whether from primary sources or secondary literature, the blazing book yields light and heat.

How could Paul’s citation of Isaiah 40:13 be typological? Because as the quotation of Isaiah 6:9–10 in all four gospels and Acts indicates, the hardening that led to the exile from the land has not yet been lifted (cf. Rom 11:25). The prophesied new exodus and return from exile have been anticipated and inaugurated but not yet consummated. Anticipated in the returns to the land narrated in Ezra and Nehemiah; inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Jesus; there is a sense in which, having rejected the Messiah, Israel remains in exile. Paul is explaining in Romans 11 how God will keep his promise to restore his people, having made them jealous by those who are no people (cf. Deut 32:21 and Rom 11:13–14). The typological pattern of new exodus and return from exile evoked in Isaiah 40, then, is the pattern that will find its antitype, its ultimate fulfillment, when the Redeemer comes from Zion, banishes ungodliness from Jacob, takes away their sin, brings them into the new covenant, “and in this way all Israel will be saved” (Rom 11:26–27). Naselli also draws insightful parallels between the experience of Job and Israel in making the case that Paul’s use of Job 41:3 is also typological.

Andy Naselli shows that Paul’s use of Isaiah 40:13 and Job 41:3 demonstrates that God established a foundation of judgment on which he built a soaring tower of mercy for the praise of his glory in the life of Job and the history of Israel, and this pattern of events will be fulfilled in the future redemption of Israel to which Paul points. To put it another way, Naselli has demonstrated that Paul’s argument here is that God shows his glory in salvation through judgment.

This book deserves the attention of all who care to understand the passages examined here, and more broadly, how the New Testament authors understand the Old. This is an exploration of unsearchable judgments and inscrutable ways (Rom 11:33), pointing to the one whose mind none has mapped, to whom none give counsel or bribes, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom 11:34–36). Let me keep you from it no longer: God’s best to you in this insightful and responsible, daring and exciting read.

In my opinion you should buy this book right now and read it as soon as possible.

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New Post at Christianity.com: How I Mark My Bible

By on August 7, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Discipleship

Someone recently asked in a comment on some post or other about how I mark my Bible.

I describe the color coding system I use in a post over at Christianity.com. Here’s the introduction:

Do you have a system for marking your Bible as you study? Over the years, I’ve found that if I want to layer reading upon reading and go deeper each time, it helps me to mark my Bible and build on my earlier study notes.

As I read the Bible, I try to make note of repeated words, resumed themes, quotations of earlier passages, and other key ideas. But I don’t want simply to see them and move on. I want to highlight them. This helps me recall connections I’ve seen, and helps me find those key ideas later. Whenever I want an uninfluenced, fresh reading of a Bible passage, I use an unmarked copy.

I try to read large chunks of Bible all at one sitting, whole books if possible, and thoroughly mark them up as I go. Doing this book after book brings out the interconnectedness of individual books and the thick intertextuality of each book of the Bible with all the others.

So, here’s what I like to do when marking my Bible. I use a mechanical pencil, a set of colored pens, colored pencils, and occasionally a highlighter to note things. As I’ve done this over the years, I’ve developed a color code for key ideas:

Continue reading . . .

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Review of Phillips, God’s Wisdom in Proverbs

By on July 31, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Books, Discipleship

Note: Themelios 37.2 has just appeared, in which this review is published. I would note also that what Dan Phillips does in this book, especially with Proverbs 22:6, goes very well with the previous post on child-training in the OT.

Dan Phillips. God’s Wisdom in Proverbs: Hearing God’s Voice in Scripture. The Woodlands, TX: Kress, 2011. xxi + 405pp. $24.99. Printed Caseside.

Dan Phillips is pastor of Copperfield Bible Church in Houston, TX, and he writes regularly with Phil Johnson and Frank Turk at the Pyromaniacs blog. In addition to the volume under review here, Phillips has written The World-Tilting Gospel. Both books come at readers with a deadly seriousness about the gospel and sound doctrine tossed in a breezy light-hearted writing style. The jocular sternness is a jolting combination: Phillips brings a grin to the face then grabs for the throat. He takes the biblical languages seriously too, so while this book does not have an academic feel the Hebrew text of Proverbs is consistently engaged.

God’s Wisdom in Proverbs comes in eight chapters with an epilogue and four appendices. Chapter one presents the essentials for understanding Proverbs: Phillips holds firmly to Solomonic authorship, an issue given 20 pages in appendix one; he interprets Proverbs in harmony with the rest of the Hebrew Bible; and he discusses the book’s structure (relying mainly on the headings), poetry, and parallelism as he orients the reader to the interpretation of the book. Chapter two is a thirty page discussion of Proverbs 1:2–6, and chapter three explores the fear of Yahweh. Chapter four focuses mainly on Proverbs 2:1–6 on the topic of “how to wise up.” Chapter five exposits the teaching of Proverbs on trusting and knowing God. Chapter six synthesizes the teaching of Proverbs on godly relationships, chapter seven does the same for marriage, and chapter 8 rounds out the body of the book with over 60 pages on the teaching of Proverbs on child-training. In the epilogue Phillips addresses the reader who might feel condemned by the high standards set forth in the book of Proverbs: he urges faith in Christ for justification, explaining how the transforming power of the Spirit to regenerate enables people to live according to the wisdom set forth in Proverbs. As mentioned above, appendix one deals with Solomonic authorship of Proverbs. Appendix two looks at “words related to teaching in Proverbs,” appendix three is given to the meaning of Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (ESV), and appendix four deals with “preaching and teaching the book of Proverbs.”

In appendix three Phillips takes the position that Proverbs 22:6 is a warning, which he translates as “Start out a youth according to his own way—even should he grow old, he will not turn from it.” Phillips shows how the bare Hebrew “his way” is typically translated such that the “way” referenced is the “right” way, but he contends, with Douglas Stuart and others, that this is an unwarranted addition. The defense Phillips provides for his interpretation of this verse, taking it to state that children will be confirmed in and stay in the way they are trained to go, whether that way is good or bad, is clear and compelling.

The teaching of Proverbs is desperately needed today. As our society descends into decadence, this book of the Bible will give us a backbone and help us to stand, and this applies to everything from fearing God to relating appropriately to others and cultivating marriage and training children, to say nothing of sound economic policy. We need no more “explanations” of Proverbs that nullify its teaching or assume it has no connection to its Old Testament context. Rather, we need balanced, studied, serious, joyful, and wise explanation and application of Proverbs. Enter Dan Phillips. This would be a great book for men’s discipleship groups, for a pastor planning to preach through Proverbs, for the recent graduate, and for much else. We can thank Phillips especially for his balanced and courageous presentation of how parents should use the rod for reproof.

Our day is also a day in which some are calling for “crazy” or “radical” expressions of Christianity. These presentations are seldom seasoned with the whole counsel of God: do they take Old Testament wisdom literature into account? Wouldn’t the Old Testament wisdom literature help us to follow Jesus, who taught people to count the cost of doing so? Often the calls to sell all or leave all appeal to younger people, typically college students, who have few responsibilities, are unmarried, and have no children—the very kinds of people for whom Solomon wrote Proverbs. All Christians today need the message of Proverbs, but it was expressly written to make wise the simple. Proverbs remains God’s word for God’s people. As we seek to follow Christ today, we will only be wholly committed to Jesus when we live by the wisdom the Spirit inspired Solomon to write in Proverbs. Dan Phillips has given us a study that would be a great place to start down the path of acquiring wisdom.

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Codex Sinaiticus: A Full Color Facsimile

By on July 18, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Books, Manuscripts

Nearly all the sacred words are in these full color photos of the pounced parchment scribed with the ancient ink. Living words copied by three maybe four careful hands. God breathed words, every one true, every thought from man and from God. Every utterance worthy of trust. These leaves in these photos passed under no press but were prepared by living hands. Letters embossed by the living, for the living, from the living. This is a book written by hands to be written on hearts.

How many such manuscripts contain both Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible? Not many. Even fewer as early as the 300’s AD. With Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus is one of the two most important manuscripts of the whole Bible in Greek. Codex Sinaiticus is a wonder of the world, a priceless treasure. More than an artifact, though, this book preserves the word of God, presenting an ancient Greek translation from the Old Testament’s Hebrew and the New Testament in its original Greek.

Unless God reveals himself, as this book claims he has, we cannot know him. Without the manuscripts that preserve God’s revelation of himself in the writings of the biblical authors, we have no access to the sacred texts. Is there anything in the world more needed than the word of God? And as one of the most ancient presentations of the word of God in Greek, what can have more value than a witness to the word such as Codex Sinaiticus?

High quality photographs of Codex Sinaiticus are being made available online, and now the British Library and Hendrickson Publishers have brought out a full size, full color facsimile of the whole manuscript. They are selling them. You can buy one. Examine it for yourself. Astonishing. Perhaps you would like to rethink whether there are more important things for you to do than examine the word of God as presented by an ancient manuscript?

The book is handsomely made and finely bound. Lovely in appearance, hefty in weight, imposing in size. The photographs are clear and the text is there for close reading. Lunate sigmas and ligatures, strike-throughs and spelling anomalies, running headers, red ink in places, binding notations from ancient craftsmen, pumice marks from the scribes who scrubbed the hide, follicles from the hair of the goats who gave their skin, tears visible where the parchment was too thin or the scribe too rough, corrections from the very scribe who made the mistake. Everything there to be seen on the thick pages with the color photos in full size.

The new full color facsimile is a vast improvement of the facsimile brought out a century ago by Helen and Kirsopp Lake. No more must a man travel to London, Leipzig, and Mount Sinai to see the whole thing. You can spread this full color facsimile of the thing on the table in front of you—you’ll need a big table.

Who should care most about such a treasure, such a privilege? Should it not be those who most love the words, those for whom these words are sweeter than honey from the comb, those who would heed the call to meditate on them day and night, build their house on the rock foundation they lay, view their world through the lens they grind, and live on the hope that rises in the east. This is our story, our book, Codex Sinaiticus our treasure. On its testimony our faith rests. These are the words that make the foolish wise unto salvation. Why not learn Greek? Why not examine the Codex?

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My Dad’s Coins

By on June 27, 2012 in Bible and Theology, History

I didn’t feel that I did enough for my Dad this past Father’s Day, and in the early hours of the Monday that followed that Sunday I had a dream about My Dad’s Coins that, it seems to me, was connected to that feeling. Having awakened from that dream, I was having a hard time getting back to sleep. I was thinking about the dream and about the advice that my good friend Denny Burk had given me about incorporating more personal illustrations in my sermons.

So I got out of bed and typed up my account of the dream, then went back to bed and got right to sleep.

Following Denny’s advice, I talked about this dream at the conclusion of my sermon this past Sunday. You can hear it here: Jeremiah 25:15–38, The Cup of Wrath.

Then I edited the written account, added some, and it’s now posted over at Christianity.com. Here’s an excerpt:

There I was in my dream, holding those coins in my hand. They had become priceless to me because of what they signified, and I was horrified that I had almost thrown them away on a cola that wouldn’t have been good for me anyway.

This is how our ignorant, wayward, and weak hearts find their way to sin. We forget the gifts our God and Father has given us. We become unmindful of what his mercy means to us. We neglect the mementos, the testimonies, the stories and songs of the Scriptures.

And all too often we are prepared to cash in our relationship with the living God for filth, filth that would ruin our lives and destroy everything precious and sacred to us. We are ignorant, wayward, and weak enough to throw away the world to come in exchange for a syrupy mixture of caffeine, sugar, and fizzy water, or worse, far worse: shameful things not to be named. God help us get hearts of wisdom.

You can read the whole thing.

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What I Learned in My First Pastorate

By on June 18, 2012 in Bible and Theology, Discipleship, Ecclesiology

A few years ago Towers invited me to reflect on what I learned in my first pastorate at Baptist Church of the Redeemer. I now post what I wrote then in this space.

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A small group of nobodies in a big room seemed really unimpressive, but I confess vanity and pride.

To be honest, I expected a lot of growth, and I expected it fast.

It didn’t happen.

Sunday after Sunday, month after month, the same four families and a few singles gathered for worship at Baptist Church of the Redeemer. As this happened, the Lord slowly disabused me of the notion that the church was going to grow because of me. It hurts to have your pride molded into humility, but it feels good, too, and how liberating! Not to mention the way others prefer humility to pride.

Through this experience, I learned that Jesus keeps His promise to build His church. I learned the power of the Word of God. And I learned – or made progress in learning – to love people.

Jesus keeps His promise His way

Jesus said, “I will build my church.” It’s His church. His glory is at stake in it. He keeps His Word. And he does it His way.

Have you noticed what a bad strategist the Lord seems to be? If you were God, and you wanted to save the world, would you do it by parading your deity or by sending Jesus to take on human flesh? And, if you chose the route of incarnation, would you go somewhere important, say, Rome or Jerusalem, or would you go to a hick town like Nazareth?

Once there, what would you do? Write some books and network with significant people? Or do manual labor for 30 years, then the big time: three more years of ambling around the Galilean countryside with smelly fishermen, preaching to unlearned crowds that happen to gather? To top it all off, would you let a bunch of wicked rebels kill you?

The Lord may seem to be a bad strategist, but His strategy is the best strategy. God accomplished salvation in Christ by the way of the cross, and Jesus calls His followers to take up their crosses, too. Jesus keeps His promise to build His church as His people follow in His steps.

Jesus gets glory when nobodies gather and love each other. Jesus gets glory when nobodies gather in moldy buildings in bad parts of town. Jesus gets glory when pastors forsake the wisdom of the world, set aside attempts to show off, open the Bible and preach it.

The power of the Word of God

David Wells says the mark of the evangelical church in America is superficiality. I am convinced that authenticity comes from the clear exposition of the Scriptures. People encounter God when His Word is read to them, explained to them and applied to them by the power of the Spirit. How do you get past the happy-smiley veneer people wear to church? Preach the Word.

Do you want singles in their late 20s and early 30s confessing anxiety about finding a mate, asking you to pray for them to trust the Lord’s providence in their lives? Do you want guys confessing their struggles with pornography as they seek to join the church? Do you want people with real problems (homosexual urges and the fallout from past sexual sin, whether lingering STD’s or guilt from an abortion) joining the church and coming for counsel in their struggle against sin? Do you want guys coming to you because they’re afraid of the way they’ve been rough with their wives and they don’t want it to go any further, so they’re seeking accountability?

You don’t get this from wearing cool clothes, having a trendy name for your church or learning to preach from comedians. If it comes – and if the authenticity about “big” sins is accompanied by authenticity about “acceptable” sins – it will come by the power of the Spirit through the preaching of the Word. The Bible convinces us to quit playing games. The Bible shows us the beauty of holiness. The Bible convicts us of the worth of this treasure, and we sell all we have – or risk exposing our sin – to buy the field in which the treasure lies.

Loving people

I can remember saying to Denny Burk when we were in school together: “I don’t want to spend time with people, there’s too much to read.” His reply came with a piercing look in tones of prophetic conviction: “Then you’re never going to minister to anybody.”

I also remember the sermon I preached on the absolute sovereignty of God, and there my sweet wife sat in the front row weeping. She wasn’t weeping because of the beauty of what I was saying; she was weeping because I was beating the people of God over the head with the club of truth in good know-it-all, seminary graduate fashion.

The people of God are familiar with us seminary types, and they have their guard up against us. There is only one way to convince them that they can let their guard down, to convince them that they can talk to us: love them. Listen to them. Let them talk. Stop correcting them. Let them explain their views, and if they don’t want your response to what they’ve said, don’t counter them. Ask the Lord to use your preaching to form their thinking. Trust him, and love the people in your care. Don’t back down from speaking the truth in love, but make sure that they sense love as you speak truth.

So did the church ever grow?

Yes, and do you want to know when? When I listened to my wife’s godly suggestion that we start a Wednesday night prayer meeting. We gathered together, sinful beggars clothed by faith with the righteousness of Christ, and we laid hold on the Lord in prayer. Drenched in His mercy, we called on the name of the Lord.

That church didn’t grow because of me. That church grew because Jesus kept His promise, because the Word of God is powerful and because we were all learning to love each other the way Jesus loved us. In spite of our insignificance, the moldy building in the bad part of town, the mediocre music and the non-flashy sermons that sought to explain the Bible, the Lord was adding to our number daily. “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to thy name give glory, because of thy lovingkindness, because of thy truth” (Ps 115:1).

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