Now some might object that they don’t want to accept the possibility that the Bible teaches that the earth is a flat disk, resting on the back of a turtle. Well, it doesn’t teach that, but if the ancient world did think that, and the Scriptures used turtle terminology straight across without missing a beat, you would have two choices. You could ditch the faith, or you could go with the turtles. What you shouldn’t do is get a couple of graduate degrees from a formerly evangelical seminary, in which process you were trained to run evasively through sitz im leben metaphors like you were a Heisman trophy contender, stiff arm out. – Doug Wilson, Hell and Hellenism, Blog and Mablog
The Favour of God the Only Satisfying Good
From The Complete Works of Mrs. Anne Steele in Two Volumes
To Refill the Core
I get what he’s saying but I still disagree with Carl Trueman on this one. To summarize, Trueman is confused as to why The Gospel Coalition is complementarian (men and women are equal but have different, complementary roles in the church) but all fuzzy on baptism since there are baptists and Presbyterians in the Coalition. More to his point, The Gospel Coalition is supposed to be focused on the gospel and isn’t the role of women in the church a secondary issue but baptism a primary one?
The reason complementarianism is important is because of the hermeneutical issues that surround it. Trueman makes a very good point that there are shades of egalitarianism that run from “the Bible is wrong on this” to those who says “you’re reading those texts wrong.” So, Trueman reasons, why exclude those who still hold to inerrancy but don’t agree with how complementarians are interpreting certain passages? I don’t know what Trueman has been reading on this but the egalitarians I’ve read employ a hermeneutic principle that can be used to justify a whole bunch more than ordaining women. The premise I’ve read is that the situation in Paul’s day was that women were uneducated and therefore not fit to lead in the church. But today women are educated and therefore good candidates for leadership in the church if they meet the other criteria.
The problems with that approach are numerous and therefore it can be used to justify anything. Instead of uneducated women, put in thieves. Sure Paul said that if a man does not work he cannot eat but back in Paul’s day if you stole from someone it meant that you were taking food off their table. Today if you steal a little from work, no one is hurt since the company makes so much money… Do you see? There are no bounds on this thing. I agree with The Gospel Coalition on this because of the hermeneutical land mines of allowing egalitarianism equal footing.
So yes, there are hermeneutical differences between the baptists and paedobaptists but we’re well aware of those differences and whichever side you’re on, the ‘errors’ of the other side don’t leak like the egalitarian error does. Denying the inference that baptism replaces circumcision isn’t likely to lead to denying the physical return of Jesus. However, a hermeneutic that says that the situation Paul was addressing in his day is different that what we see today and therefore the explicit requirements and prescriptions in the Bible don’t apply to us could lead in any number of dangerous directions.
The Gospel Coalition is about more than just setting “aside issues which divide at a church level but which do not seem to impact directly upon the gospel”, as Trueman says, they are about the health of the church. And qualifications for church leaders has a lot to do with the health of the church. I was at the very first Gospel Coalition conference which was held at Trinity University’s chapel and I got to hear what Carson and Keller wanted to do in putting the Coalition together. They were concerned about the doctrinal hollowing out of the evangelical church in America. Carson gave a good talk on how evangelicalism used to be doctrinal but we’ve tended to put that aside and focus on techniques. The Gospel Coalition is supposed to help the American evangelical church regain her doctrinal core. And while we may differ on the doctrine of baptism, no one in the Coalition is going to say that baptism is optional or a practice for a different age. Complementarianism is important because within evangelicalism, egalitarianism is new and rests on a hermeneutical loophole.
Three Things
It was an interesting morning doing Bible study. I’m using a chronological outline to read through the Bible in a year and right now I’m reading through Jeremiah. Today was two chapters of Jeremiah and a few Psalms. Three things struck me.
I. Ethiopian Eunuchs are Great Guys! In Jeremiah 38 Jeremiah’s enemies toss him in a muddy cistern because he keeps telling people that God has given Jerusalem into the hands of Babylon. Jeremiah’s enemies don’t believe him and they think he is convincing the troops to give up. So sure, a cistern seems a logical place to put him. I guess they were too chicken to kill him themselves. Now for some reason Ebed-melech, an Ethiopian eunuch, is living in besieged and surrounded Jerusalem. What is a foreigner doing in Judah while the country is under attack? He’s rescuing Jeremiah, that’s what he’s doing (Jeremiah 38:7-13). And here’s God’s response to Ebed-melech:
The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah while he was shut up in the court of the guard: “Go, and say to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will fulfill my words against this city for harm and not for good, and they shall be accomplished before you on that day. But I will deliver you on that day, declares the LORD, and you shall not be given into the hand of the men of whom you are afraid. For I will surely save you, and you shall not fall by the sword, but you shall have your life as a prize of war, because you have put your trust in me, declares the LORD.'” (Jeremiah 39:15-18)
The next Ethiopian eunuch we meet in scripture is unnamed but likewise puts his trust in the Lord. In Acts 8 he’s riding along reading Isaiah 53 and wondering about the meaning. God sends Philip to him to explain and the eunuch gets baptized.
God blessed and worked through Israel and says that he’ll bless Egypt and Assyria (Isaiah 19:23) but Ethiopia is never mentioned specifically as a country God would favor. And eunuchs are the wrong sort of people. They cannot be circumcised and they cannot enter the temple (Deuteronomy 23:1) and yet here are two of them putting their trust in God and being blessed. I’m so glad that God chooses the least likely, that his favor is not a matter of ethnicity or physical properties. That means a person like me can find God’s favor. A person like you can too.
II. Incorruptible Governors. This one is a bit more circumspect of a thought. In Jeremiah 40, Jerusalem has fallen, Zedekaih has been blinded and hauled to Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar has set up rules to watch over Israel. In other words, the whole nation is now in exile. The poor are left to take care of the land and many who fled during the invasion have now returned to Israel. Word comes to Gedaliah, the Jewish governor, that one of the returnees has been sent to assassinate him but he doesn’t believe it.
For some reason this got me thinking of Jesus future reign on earth. He will return and the saints will be raised with him and rule with him (Revelation 3:21, 20:4) on this earth. This is fitting because how can you corrupt or intimidate a resurrected saint? What kind of bribe are you going to offer him or her? Can a threat of death be made that will sway them? What kind of material thing would they want to hoard for themselves? There could be no better vice-regents on earth than resurrected saints!
III. Heads. Psalm 74 was one of the Psalms I read this morning with Jeremiah 39-40. In it Asaph is lamenting that God has cast off his people and that God’s foes are scoffing. But Asaph has hope and he remembers God’s might. In verses 13-14 Asaph remembers that God “broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters” and also that he “crushed the heads of Leviathan” and “gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.” So multiple sea monsters have multiple heads, that makes sense. But what I didn’t know is that Leviathan, who is a single beast, had multiple heads and God crushed them. If you look up “Leviathan” throughout the scriptures, you’ll see that it is described as a large, dangerous sea creature and one that God is always powerful over it. But in Job 41 Leviathan has one tongue and in Isaiah 27 Leviathan is yet to be crushed. So perhaps “Leviathan” describes a sort of creature rather than a single living animal. And one of them had multiple heads. That just struck me as cool.
Which Sinkhole?
I haven’t done politics on the blog in a while but since the SCOTUS upheld Obamacare, there is an opportunity for comment.
Despite the uproar over Justice Robert’s “betrayal” I think he did the right thing. If the penalty for the individual mandate is a tax, and the government lawyers defending Obamacare said it was, and Congress has the right to raise taxes then the darned thing is constitutional. So there’s that. But there is a rub to that definition. The House has to originate tax bills and Obamacare originated in the Senate. So there is still an opportunity to overturn it on a technicality. I’d rather that didn’t happen.
Why? Since the court ruled the law as constitutional, the fight goes back to where it belongs: with the electorate. If you think the individual mandate is a good thing, vote for those who support it. If you think it is a bad thing, vote for those opposed. This should not be something that the American people are subject to but not involved in. I’m glad we’re in an election cycle right now.
My opinion is that Obamacare did the wrong thing. Our healthcare system is out of whack and all Obamacare did was force everyone to be part of a broken system. It didn’t actually fix anything. What the government needs to do is to follow the money in the healthcare system and fix that drain. Who is making all the dough? Why is healthcare so expensive? Find that and fix it then you probably won’t have to force people into the system. And why do employers have to provide healthcare insurance? What is the connection there? No one asked that, it is the way it is and so we’ve encoded it. But that isn’t the best way to provide healthcare insurance; when employment changes, why should someone be cut off just because their job went away? That is another part that doesn’t make sense and yet isn’t being questioned.
Just to be clear, I don’t think the Republicans are going to do the right thing either. Romney has said that he wants to repeal and replace Obamacare but I’m not sure the Republicans have looked at which sinkhole the healthcare money is disappearing down either so who knows what they’ll come up with.
Preaching with Teeth
All are tempted to forget that preaching can do what it is supposed to do only if the preacher is a man of God. And they are tempted to forget that being a man of God means being a man of the Word and prayer. A sermon is not entertainment, nor a dump of information about God, nor a theological lecture. It is an encounter with the living God, and a preacher can fulfill his vocation well only if he knows that God…
As Eugene Peterson has often observed, pastors can camouflage their vocational failures under a frenzy of busyness—not least because church members notice busyness. A pastor devoted to prayer and the word looks like a withdrawn pastor, a pastor who doesn’t care much for his people, or any people for that matter. Parishioners may be more intrigued by a preacher who can speak in the latest slang, who quotes the hot bands, who jars them with obscenities from the pulpit than by a man who knows God deeply.
Preachers should believe that that God knows what people need better than people do. What builds the church is not a man who has acquired theological information, or a man who can keep the attention of a crowd. Theological information and rhetorical skill are important. But what a congregation finally needs is assurance that the man who speaks to them from the pulpit every week is capable of bringing God’s word because he is acquainted with the Father of Jesus Christ through the filling of their Spirit. – Peter Leithart, A Man of God, First Things blog
SAN DIEGO, CA – Having completed all the tasks they set for him, Sea World is set to release Michael Phelps back into the ocean on Tuesday, August 14th. Phelps helped the United States once again dominate the Olympics in total medals won.
“Michael has performed exactly as we had trained him,” said Nancy Mebane, a Sea World spokesman. “Everyone at Sea World, his trainers especially, are proud of Michael and we’re going to miss him as he swims away to rejoin his pod.”
Phelps became the most decorated Olympian winning a total of 22 medals during his captivity. Phelps contributed to the United States winning the most medals in the 2012 Olympics, 104 total, beating the next country, China, by 16 medals.
“We’re glad to have had Michael on our team,” said Scott Blackman, CEO of the US Olympics Committee. “It is fortunate for us that it was a US flagged fishing vessel’s net that Michael got tangled in all those years ago. He adapted to captivity well and was excited to get the job done. He is ready to head home now for a well deserved retirement.”
Phelps will perform one last show before he is released. “Yeah, I’m looking forward to swimming with Bullet and Gracie one more time,” Phelps said, referring to two of the dolphins he has been training with at Sea World. “They gave me some messages for their families but really, they’re happy to be doing what they do. They love being able to help lift humanity’s spirits and hope to help them grow as a species.”
Phelps final Sea World appearance will be in the Tuesday afternoon “An Ocean of Magic” dolphin show in San Diego. Sea World staff are keeping the time and location of his release secret.
What The Sabbath Looks Like in the New Covenant
“So we see that the sabbath can be broken, not only by those who walk away from it in contempt, but also by those who swing it around in such a way as to bloody the noses of others. The problem of sabbatarian sabbath-breaking can begin very subtly. It has taken hold when the first question asked is, ‘What am I not allowed to do on Sunday?’ The desire for such direction is a very natural one, but if we are not careful, the end result will be a rabbinical ruling on whether it is lawful to shoot hoop in the driveway, or push buttons on the microwave. Of course, we will at some point choose to avoid certain things on the Lord’s Day, but we must ensure that it is the natural result of what we have embraced — the sabbath is a positive ordinance” – Doug Wilson, A Primer on Worship and Reformation, p. 66
Don’t Waste Your Social Media
Doug Wilson’s wisdom on social media:
Technology is a gift and blessing from God and, as such, it is a form of wealth. We are not permitted to think that wealth is sinful in and of itself, but we are required to remember at all times that it presents to us a peculiar set of temptations.
Because the Bible doesn’t mention Facebook, or Twitter, or other forms of social media by name, many people just assume all bets are off, and that they can do whatever they want. Unfortunately, what they want usually works out to a colossal waste of time at best, and at worst, it spirals down into immorality and vice.
But there are glorious opportunities involved here, opportunities that ought not to be squandered. Instead of gossip, or random updates about a bunch of nothing, use social media to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Use it to encourage the saints—Scripture says that every word should be used to edify the one who hears. And use it to call out tyranny and coercion wherever you see it—and if you don’t see it anywhere, it is because your eyes aren’t open.
Make it a point to post, a significant percentage of the time, encouraging Scriptures, quotations from Chesterton, memes that confound the sanctimonious, sermon clips, and book reviews. And don’t do it like you are being super-spiritual either. Just be normal—but remember that normal ought to be biblically normed.
Lively Preaching
“First, it must be realized that liveliness in the preacher does not mean liveliness in the congregation. On the contrary, the extreme liveliness in the preacher is produced by dullness in the congregation… It is when the congregation is dull that it wants to be amused.” – G.K. Chesterton in All is Grist