Jason D. Mirikitani, Mile Marker 825

In this picture you see me and my friend Jason Mirikitani running the White Rock Marathon in Dallas, TX back in 1997. He looks happy and strong, and I’m suffering to finish! That brother carried be through that day. He stayed by me when he could have gone on ahead, finished the race, and gotten off his feet sooner. He laid down his life and suffered with me to help me finish. Praise God for such a friend!

Just under ten years ago, this dear brother was in a tragic accident. The delight of his eyes, his young wife of just over 3 years, was killed. He was in critical condition. Thankfully, their one year old baby was unhurt.

Miraculously, he lived. Miraculously, he walked again. Miraculously, he continued to trust God and give him glory. Jason is a miracle of God. He recently finished a degree at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis.

My dear friend Jason has now given us his story of faith being refined and purified through much affliction. Here is a modern day Job. I commend this book to you: Mile Marker 825: A Widower’s Survival and Resurrected Hope.

Christmas is just around the corner. This would be a great encouragement for a believer facing trials, and it’s a great testimony of God’s mercy and power for those considering the claims of Christianity.

Here’s the blurb I wrote for the book:

Peter likened tested faith to gold refined by fire. Jason Mirikitani’s faith has been refined by suffering, and now through smoke and flame he testifies. Praise be to the mighty God who sustained him in all his woe, and praise God we get to read the story.”

I received my copy on Friday, and my parents were in town this weekend. My mom picked up the book and didn’t put it down until she had finished the whole thing.

You can check out Jason’s website, or go to the book’s where you can download chapter one (put your cursor over the image of the book’s cover).

Or you can go straight to Amazon to get your copy, which I highly recommend you do.

Review of Yarbrough’s 1-3 John

1–3 John. BECNT. By Robert W. Yarbrough. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008. xx +434pp. $39.99. Published in The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 14.3 (2010), 98–99.

Robert W. Yarbrough and Robert H. Stein are the editors of the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, and they have now each contributed stellar volumes to the series. This series has established itself as a top tier set of commentaries on the New Testament, and Yarbrough’s volume on 1–3 John is a credit to the others. This brief review will focus on the treatment of 1 John, but Yarbrough’s treatment of the two shorter epistles is as strong as his treatment of the longer.

In his preface, Yarbrough identifies six emphases that distinguish his work on these letters of John. I condense them as follows: (1) reliance on the gospels as true and influencing the Johannine letters, especially the gospel of John; (2) use of computer aids to explore linguistic ties with the LXX; (3) attention given to each textual variant noted in NA27; (4) use of recent scholarship; (5) use of historic Christian scholarship from the fathers to the reformers; and (6) an attempt to bear in mind international contexts, whether Muslim, post-Marxist, Asian, or persecuted.

The introduction to the commentary offers a thoroughgoing defense of the idea that John the son of Zebedee was the author of both the Fourth Gospel and 1–3 John, convincingly demonstrating the implausibility of Bauckham’s reliance on Eusebius’ dubious introduction of a second John in addition to the son of Zebedee. Yarbrough maintains that 1 John is a letter on the basis of ancient testimony and certain epistolary features it bears, and he surveys the evidence for the setting of Ephesus and Asia Minor in the last few decades of the first century. Yarbrough then traces intriguing connections between the letters of John and the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2–3. In view of the lack of consensus regarding 1 John’s organization, he relies on divisions that became standard among scribal copyists, which are reflected in the inner marginal numbers of NA27. These are the basis for his detailed exegetical outline of 1 John. Yarbrough’s discussion of the theology of John concludes that the center of John’s thought is the same as the center of Paul’s, as argued by Schreiner: “the grandeur and centrality of God” (27).

Here I can only survey some conclusions espoused in the commentary, but the evidence adduced for them is of the highest quality. Readers will want to avail themselves of these arguments. As the commentary unfolds, Yarbrough helpfully identifies John’s focus on believing, doing, and loving. On 1 John 2:2, he explains that “Jesus did not suffer for every individual indiscriminately but particularly for those whom God knew he would save,” agreeing with Calvin on the point that “‘the whole world’ refers to believers scattered everywhere and in all times” (80). This does not keep him from adding in the next sentence: “And yet none of this rules out certain positive benefits—God’s common grace to humans generally . . .—that are spin-offs of the central redeeming benefit proper of the cross” (81). He also affirms that the gospel can be offered to all in good faith. On 2:12–13, Yarbrough takes “little children” to refer to the whole audience, which is then divided into older and younger with the address to fathers and young men. The lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life in 2:16 are aptly explained as “what the body hankers for and the eyes itch to see and what people toil to acquire” (134). The coming antichrist in 2:18 seems to be an individual, while the antichrists are ringleaders of doctrinal aberration or ethical laxity. The sense in which Christians do not sin (e.g., 3:6) is that they do not strike “an advanced or confirmed posture of noncompliance with John’s message” (185). The water and blood by which Jesus came in 5:6 refer to his baptism and death (282). The sin unto death in 5:16 “is simply violation of the fundamental terms of relationship with God that Jesus Christ mediates” (310), and this is “to have a heart unchanged by God’s love in Christ and so persist in convictions and acts and commitments” that betray unbelief (311).

Robert Yarbrough has given us what is, in my opinion, the best commentary on the Johannine epistles available. Slightly more detailed that Akin’s excellent volume, this will be the first one I turn to and the first I recommend.

Championship!

The other night the Faculty-Staff Basketball team squared off against a team of SBTS students for all the marbles in the Intramural Basketball championship. We (the Faculty-Staff team) jumped out to an early lead, but soon lost that and by half-time we were down by 20 points.

We clawed our way back into the game as Matt Emadi and David “Gunner” Gunderson relentlessly put points on the board. With two minutes to go, we had a 2 point lead. The students tied the game, and then they got the ball with just under a minute to play. They drove to the basket, got fouled, and went to the line for 2 free throws, making one.

So we were down 1 point, 68 – 67, with 4.1 seconds on the clock. We called time out. What followed was the stuff of legend. In-bounding the ball, I was looking for Emadi or Gunderson all the way. Gunner came open. We had mentioned the possibility of getting the ball in-bounds and calling time out from half court. I knew, though, when I threw the ball to Gunner, that he was going hard to the hoop. Here’s what happened:

Gunner took the ball, went down the court, and hit the clutch buzzer-beating three with a guy in his face!

70 – 68 Faculty-Staff Championship!

Completion!

A FedEx Truck just left this copy of God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology on our front doorstep.

Praise the Lord! May his favor be upon us, and may he confirm the work of our hands (Ps 90:17).

Some time back I thought through the timeline on this project. It’s a joy to reflect on God’s faithfulness to me and my family through these years:

Spring 2002, Prof. Mark Seifrid’s Seminar on New Testament Theology introduced me to the discussion of the question of the center of biblical theology, and in reading these discussions I was struck that no one had proposed that God’s glory was central to biblical theology.

October 2002, Finished my first trip through Isaiah in Hebrew, very impressed with the theme of God’s glory in salvation through judgment.

Summer 2004, Presented a paper at the Triennial Conference of the Tyndale Fellowship, responded to by I. Howard Marshall, attended by, among others, G. K. Beale and T. Desmond Alexander.

Spring 2005 (April), Met Bruce Winter at the Wheaton Theology Conference, and he told me that the paper would be published in Tyndale Bulletin.

November 2005, Presented a paper at ETS on “The Center of Biblical Theology in Acts.”

Spring 2006, “The Centre of Biblical Theology: The Glory of God in Salvation through Judgment?” appears in Tyndale Bulletin.

June 24, 2006, Justin Taylor emailed me asking if I had ever considered proposing a book on the center of biblical theology.

September 20, 2006, Justin emails again, and I send him initial proposals.

January 2007, Proposal shaping up, positive emails with JT, Schreiner, and Beale.

January 17, 2007, Discussion of August 2007 or January 2008 as completion dates!

February 7, 2007, Passes first hurdle at Crossway.

February 21, 2007, Offer to publish (contract!) comes from Crossway.

Fall 2008, “The Center of Biblical Theology in Acts” published in Themelios.

January 1, 2010, Completed manuscript submitted to Crossway.

Spring/Summer 2010, Read through the book three different times in various editorial stages.

November 4, 2010, The book arrives at Crossway, and they overnight me a copy.

November 5, 2010, Today the book arrives on my doorstep while we were eating lunch as a family. Our 6 year old son went to the door and came back with a package. Rejoicing and celebration ensues.

Glory to God in the highest.

In Houston This Weekend

Lord willing, I’ll be at Bethel Church Houston (formerly Bethel Independent Presbyterian Church) this Sunday, November 7, 2010. I’ll be preaching from Revelation 5 in their two morning services, and then at 5pm leading a Sunday Night Seminar on “God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology.”

If you’re in the Houston area, it would be a delight to see you again.

Amazon says that God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology has not yet been released. But, praise God, attendees of the Sovereign Grace Pastors Conference received copies earlier this week, and Bethel Church has boxes of the book available.

I still don’t have a print copy myself! So if you want a copy of the book, it appears that right now Bethel Church in Houston is the only place in the world where you can get it.

Andy Naselli on Organizing Your Library

I love Zotero. If you write essays, articles, papers, or books, you’ll want to know about this program. Andy Naselli taught me how to use it, and now he has written a piece that will help you, too.

This is a must read.

On his site he’s posted an overview of an article that is now at Reformation21.

If you’re looking for ways to streamline your use of the tools and opportunities you have, be a good steward and read this essay.

“The Mystery of Marriage” from For the Fame of God’s Name

Praise God for marriage! What gift can be compared to this one? Who but God could have come up with something so good?

Crossway has kindly granted permission for me to post my essay from the Piper Festschrift:

James M. Hamilton Jr., “The Mystery of Marriage,” pages 253-71 in For the Fame of God’s Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper, ed. Sam Storms and Justin Taylor. Wheaton: Crossway, 2010.

Taken from For the Fame of God’s Name edited by Sam Storms and Justin Taylor, ©2010.  Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.

Here is the opening paragraph of “The Mystery of Marriage”:

Marriage holds a unique place in all the Bible: what else joins two image-bearers together as one, serves as a key concept for understanding the relationship between Yahweh and Israel then Christ and the church, and consequently affords to every married couple the opportunity to live out the gospel? God sets himself on display in marriage, which means that God shows his glory in marriage. Thus, the thesis of this essay is that marriage exists as a unique display of God’s glory.[1] In order to establish and exposit this thesis we will look first at the way that marriage joins two persons in the likeness of God as one. From there the second section explores the way that Yahweh’s relationship to Israel is treated as a marriage, and the third section of this essay will examine the way that marriage exists to portray the relationship between Christ and the church. The final section will look at marriages as mini-dramas of the gospel.[2]


[1] I am humbled to have this opportunity to honor John Piper. The Lord has used him mightily in my life, mainly as I have listened to recorded sermons and addresses across the years. In this preaching, the Lord has used John Piper to herald again and again the infinite glory of God in Christ. I cannot adequately thank him for showing me such glory, but I can join him in praising this glorious God, this worthy Savior, and this powerful Spirit, three persons, ever one God, worthy of all praise. And praise be to God for John Piper! I am also grateful to write on the topic of marriage in honor of Piper, since his chapter on marriage in Desiring God provided a key insight I have pursued in my own marriage and announced at every wedding at which it has been my privilege to speak: love seeks its joy in the joy of the beloved. “The reason there is so much misery in marriage is not that husbands and wives seek their own pleasure, but that they do not seek it in the pleasure of their spouses” (John Piper, Desiring God [Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1996], 175–76). See also John Piper, This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009).

[2] For a wider discussion of marriage in the Old Testament, see Paul R. House, Old Testament Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1998), 466–69. For a broader discussion of marriage that takes up the issues of divorce, qualifications for elders, and children, see Thomas R. Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 776–86.

From there the outline of the essay is as follows:

Adam and Eve: Two Become One

Yahweh and Israel: Covenant Broken and Kept

Hosea 1: Hosea and Gomer
Hosea 2: Israel’s History and Future
Hosea 3: Hosea and Israel’s Future

Jesus and the Church: Marriage and the Gospel

The Fulfillment of Old Testament Expectation
The Deep Waters of the Meaning of Marriage

The Gospel and Marriage

Conclusion

The essay’s end is punctuated by an attempt at poetry:

Marriage

Like land and sea and stars above
And all else he has made,
This too is for the glory of
The one who has displayed

A love not based on beauty’s shades
Nor driven by some debt,
A love before there were yet days
Like none else ever met.

The archetype for man and wife
Is Christ’s love for his bride.
To Christ her Lord the church submits,
And for her life he died.

And for this reason, man should leave
His parents and his kin,
And to his wife then he shall cleave
Never to leave again.

Please do read the whole thing. This essay was written for a volume honoring John Piper, and my prayer is also that it will serve to strengthen the marriages of those who read it.

May your understanding of the gospel be deepened, and may it be displayed in the way you love your spouse and hold marriage in honor (Heb 13:5, even if you aren’t married).

Crossway Publishes For the Fame of God’s Name: Essays in Honor of John Piper

I join the chorus of gratitude to God for the ministry of John Piper.

I could tell many anecdotes about how Denny Burk and I used to quote snippets of his sermons to each other, about how powerfully the Lord used a Piper sermon when I didn’t know how to argue against open theism, about how the first paragraph of Let the Nations Be Glad! made me feel like I’d been to a theological chiropractor and been put into joint for the first time in my life, about how grateful I am for the marital insight that love seeks its joy in the beloved, and so much more.

I’m thrilled to see this book appear:

Justin Taylor has the video of the presentation of the book to Piper that took place this past Saturday.

Thanks and praise be to God, and again I express my gratitude and honor also to whom honor is due, Piper himself.

May the Lord continue to use John Piper for the good of his people and the glory of his name.

On Re-Reading Homer’s Iliad

Homer’s noble high-born lords
Think mainly of themselves,
Lasting words and shining swords,
Through flesh and soul they delve.

Yet the highest truths we have
He does not seem to know:
For sinful guilt he gives no salve;
No peace with God does show.

Reading him, one must ask why
There’s good in his wide world,
In lust and shame his gods still lie,
Their vain desires unfurled.

Not even Zeus, in all his pride,
From destiny is free,
Decreed fate he can’t outstride
To govern what will be.

No hope in Priam’s city now
Across the wine-dark sea,
Nor can the black ships show somehow
A way of life to thee.

Tragic ruin, futile rage,
The melody he sings,
A song now sung from age to age,
Still the high beauty rings.

For though he lacked the highest truth
This world his blind eyes saw,
And what he saw his tongue unloosed,
Thrilling the heart with awe.

Fred Zaspel on The Theology of Warfield

I’m really excited to see this new book from Fred Zaspel, The Theology of B. B. Warfield: A Systematic Summary. It gives me another nudge to read Warfield himself, which I’m eager to do. So many books . . .

Justin Taylor interviewed Zaspell on the book here.

And the Crossway blog has a link to an audio interview with him here.

HCSB Study Bible

The English language is blessed to have a variety of good translations of the Bible, and I think it’s good that in these translations we have something of a spectrum that moves from readability on one end to literalness on the other. As I think about it, the most literal translation is still the New American Standard. In former days I would have said that the most readable translation was the NIV, but now I think that the HCSB has every right to supercede the NIV. The HCSB is more current and more literal, while maintaining fluid readability.

Do you want a readable translation that you can trust? The HCSB is now the translation for you. And congratulations to B&H on the release of the HCSB Study Bible. I commend this handsome volume to you. It will help you understand the Bible. They’ve also produced a nice website where you can access the translation and study notes.

The translation has established itself in the top tier of English Bible translations, and the translation is now presented with a wealth of useful information in the HCSB Study Bible.

I commend the translation to you without reservation, and the Study Bible will be another resource to consult as you study. May the Word of God run in our generation.

Imagination Captured!

I noted recently that my sons and I enjoyed the first two books of Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga. We’re praying that God will bless him as he writes book 3, and that he’ll hurry up and finish so we can read it!

Anyway, the other day my 6 year old brought me this sketch of Podo Helmer, the Pirate turned noble grandfather in the stories.

I’d say his imagination has been captured.

Andrew Peterson has a spot on his website for pictures like this one, so we’re hoping Jake’s drawing of old Podo might make its way onto the big screen.

Recommendation: if you have kids, read these books together!