Monthly Archive for April, 2011

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It Can Be Your Story as Well

Published on April 24, 2011 in Easter and Recommended Reading. 0 Comments

Tim Keller in his book, King’s Cross, on the Gospel of Mark:

. . . Mark has given us the story of Jesus and declared that this is actually the world’s true story as well: Jesus, the King, created all things in love.  He has the power and the beauty to see his vision for the world through to its glorious end, to undo everything we have been able to do to harm it. To accomplish that, he had to come and die for it. Three days later, he rose again; and one day will come back again to usher in a renewed creation.

The gospel is the ultimate story that shows victory coming out of defeat, strength coming out of weakness, life coming out of death, rescue from abandonment. And because it is a true story, it gives us hope because we know life is really like that.

It can be your story as well. God made you to love him supremely, but he lost you. He returned to get you back, but it took the cross to do it. He absorbed your darkness so that one day you can finally and dazzingly become your true self and take your seat at his eternal feast.  (King’s Cross, page 230).

I plan on watching this on Easter

Published on April 24, 2011 in Easter. 0 Comments

Cal Thomas: Especially At Easter, It’s Easy to Mock Jesus Christ But Don’t You Dare Mock Other Faiths

Published on April 23, 2011 in Easter and Holy Week. 0 Comments

Cal Thomas:

Mocking Jesus of Nazareth is nothing new. Whether it is today’s Lady Gaga or a “Hunky Jesus” contest in San Francisco, Jesus has been the subject of ridicule by those who do not know Him.

Even on the day we call Good Friday, the day he hung on a cross for the sins of others (not His own, for He had none), He was ridiculed. “Come down from the cross and then we’ll believe,” some shouted. They wouldn’t have believed if He had, because they refused to believe all the other miracles He performed before their eyes.

Lady Gaga’s latest attempt at blasphemy . . .

Read the rest here.

Dan Phillips: Worst Day Ever

Published on April 23, 2011 in Holy Week. 0 Comments

Dan Phillips:

The irony of the phrase “Good Friday” has been noted, probably, by all of us. “Good” for us, certainly. Without the cross-work of the Son of God on that day, all would be lost, hopelessly and forever.

But of course it was a horrid day, viewed from any other angle. Our race — Adam’s race — reached its nadir on that day. Any appalling crime you can call to mind was bottomed by the mock-trial and the mocking of God incarnate. At that point, we hit bottom, and the Gospels record it for all to see, for all time.

But the worst day, ever, for the apostles and most who loved Jesus, had to be that Saturday, which today marks.

Read the rest here.

In the nursing home, every day is Saturday

Published on April 23, 2011 in Easter. 3 Comments

Theologically speaking, we all know that today, the Saturday between the Cross and the Resurrection, is the longest day of the year.*

And, it pictures where we are in life.  While we have a certain and fixed hope, we still wait for the return of Christ.

Nowhere is this felt more keenly than in the nursing home.  I went to two different nursing homes today.  The first lady I prayed with is near the end.  This will most likely be her final Saturday before Easter.  I read to her both the account of the crucifixion and the resurrection from Matthew’s Gospel.

But, my final visit was to a dear lady in our church who is still thinking clearly, and so wrestling with waiting in a nursing home.  She tried to be positive; she told me they had a blessed Good Friday service and that the preaching was her favorite part.

She then confessed to me that she has been reading the Catholic devotional aloud to the Catholics.  She said, “Pastor, they don’t have anyone who is up to reading right now, so I read it to them.” I gave her absolution for this (in a Protestant sort of way) and told her it is okay.

Still, this dear sister is very tired of being in the nursing home.  I said to her, “It’s so much like waiting for Christmas when you’re young.  It seems as though it will never get here.  But, very soon, the resurrection will be here, and the dead in Christ will rise, and so we can be comforted with these words (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).”

Is there someone who won’t be able to get out for Easter this year that you could encourage?  Even tomorrow, it’s still Saturday in the nursing home.

*Repeated from 2010.

This the Power of the Cross

Published on April 22, 2011 in Worship. 0 Comments

The Birther Question Deserves Our Attention This Weekend

Published on April 22, 2011 in Christology, Easter and Holy Week. 1 Comment

Donald Trump has recently made a point of asking to see documentation for the President’s place of birth. While I don’t have people on the ground in Hawaii, I’m not personally persuaded this questions needs any attention.  I’m not planning on reading up on the Obama-Birther discussion Saturday morning.

But, there is another “birther question” that is one that ought to concern us all: Is Jesus the Son of God?

Scripture, in many different ways tell us that Jesus is the Son of God: “The Word became flesh (John 1:14)”, “that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20). . .”

My friend Dr. Lamonte King, Jr. reminded me earlier today that Paul begins Romans by reminding his audience that “Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:4).”

If there was any question about Jesus’s Messianic qualification, if there were any Donald Trump types floating about Jerusalem in the days leading up to the Cross, the question of Jesus’ identity was solved once and for all when God made declaration of the identity of His Son in the resurrection.

Nails in our pockets this Good Friday, and every day

Published on April 22, 2011 in Christology and Soteriology. 1 Comment

In, The Cross Centered Life, C.J. Mahaney quotes Luther in explaining that we all carry the nails of the Cross in our pockets:

You and I follow along as the Romans lead Jesus away to the hill called Golgotha – - “Place of a Skull.” They nail His quivering flesh onto a cross, then raise it and slam it on the ground.

From all around us in the throng of onlookers, the verbal abuse continues. Those passing by wag their heads and say, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” The chief priests and the scribes and the elders echo the mockery: “He saved others; he cannot save himself.

Make no mistake: Jesus can descend from the cross and save Himself at any moment.  It isn’t the nails that keep Him there.  What keeps Him there is what placed Him there – - His passion to do the will of His Father, and His love for sinners like you and me.

Without their knowing it, the mocking words these onlookers utter do in fact reveal the uniqueness of the Savior’s death and why it mattered.  In their spiritual blindness they in effect express sublime spiritual truths. For Jesus cannot save both Himself and save you and me. It’s precisely because He refused to save Himself that He’s able to save others.

It would be necessary for Him to die even if it were for your sin alone or my sin alone. That’s why you and I are fully responsible for this tragic death. As John Stott wisely observed, “Until you see the cross as that which is done by you, you will never appreciate that it is done for you.”

Luther said that we all carry in our pockets His very nails. Are you aware of those nails in your possession?

Ancient Tsunami Warnings and Lives Built on the Beach

Published on April 21, 2011 in Matthew and Word of God. 3 Comments

Our hearts continue to go out to the people of Japan.  In the below thought, I am not making a point about the Japanese people.  But, I am noticing how the Bible uses this picture of building on the beach to illustrate an important truth for everyone.

Specifically, a New York Times article reminds us of the physical danger of ignoring wisdom and building in the wrong place.  Surely, this is the sort of picture Jesus had in mind when he said if we hear his words and don’t do them we are like a man who builds his house on the beach (Matthew 7:24-27).”

To hear the Words of Christ and not do them is to build on the beach.

Ko Sosaki for the New York Times.

ANEYOSHI, Japan — The stone tablet has stood on this forested hillside since before they were born, but the villagers have faithfully obeyed the stark warning carved on its weathered face: “Do not build your homes below this point!”

Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

Tamishige Kimura, village leader of Aneyoshi, Japan, took a walk with his grandson this week.

Residents say this injunction from their ancestors kept their tiny village of 11 households safely out of reach of the deadly tsunami last month that wiped out hundreds of miles of Japanese coast and rose to record heights near here. The waves stopped just 300 feet below the stone.

“They knew the horrors of tsunamis, so they erected that stone to warn us,” said Tamishige Kimura, 64, the village leader of Aneyoshi.

Read the whole thing here.

Augustine on God’s Love . . . and Hate

Published on April 21, 2011 in Holy Week and Quotes. 2 Comments

Consider this profound quote from Augustine (emphasis added):

God’s love is incomprehensible and unchangeable. For it was not after we were reconciled to him through the blood of his Son that he began to love us. Rather, he has loved us before the world was created, that we also might be his sons along with his only-begotten Son—before we became anything at all.

The fact that we were reconciled through Christ’s death must not be understood as if his Son reconciled us to him that he might now begin to love those whom he had hated. Rather, we have already been reconciled to him who loves us, with whom we were enemies on account of sin. The apostle will testify whether I am speaking the truth: ‘God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us’ [Rom. 5:8]. Therefore, he loved us even when we practiced enmity toward him and committed wickedness.

Thus in a marvelous and divine way he loved us even when he hated us. For he hated us for what we were that he had not made; yet because our wickedness had not entirely consumed his handiwork, he knew how, at the same time, to hate in each one of us what he had made, and to love what he had made.

Quoted in Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 506-507.

HT: Desiring God