A Keller quote from Kemeny's brief devotion yesterday, (I asked him for the text)

“If the distance between the earth and sun, 92 million miles, was reduced to the thickness of one sheet of paper, then the distance between the earth and the nearest star would be a stack of paper nearly 70 feet high. The diameter of the galaxy would be a stack of paper 310 miles high. That’s how big the galaxy is. Yet the galaxy is nothing but a speck of dust in the whole universe. And the Bible says that Jesus Christ holds this universe together with the Word and with His power, with his pinky, as it were. And then ask this question: Is this the kind of person who you ask into your life to be your personal assistant? Think about the implications of this for your life."

Reason for God #18 on the NY Times

Tim Keller's book is number 18 on the New York Times Bestsellers list! (Score) I cannot wait till Easter till I get my hands on a copy. (Oh the sheer delight).

Here is an interview that Keller did with First Things. [HT - Between Two Worlds]

I journeyed to Barnes and Noble and Borders - Both places had it. I have read that a few coffee joints have them next to "The God Delusion" and Keller's book is being picked up more than Dawkins.

two quotes grabbed from elsewhere

Biblical texts such as Isaiah 60 and Revelation 21-22 depict a renewed,
perfect, future world in which we retain our cultural differences (”every
tongue, tribe, people, nation”). This means every human culture has (from God)
distinct goods and strengths for the enrichment of the human race. As Walls
indicates, while every culture has distortions and elements that will be
critiqued and revised by the Christian message, each culture will also have good
and unique elements to which Christianity connects and adapts. [Sets'n'Service]

“The death of Jesus was qualitatively different from any other death. The physical pain was nothing compared to the spiritual experiences of cosmic abandonment. Christianity alone among the world religions claims that God became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ and therefore knows firsthand despair, rejection, loneliness, poverty, bereavement, torture, and imprisonment. On the cross he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power excels ours. In his death, God suffers in love, identifying with the abandoned and godforsaken. Why did he do it? The Bible says that Jesus came on a rescue mission for creation. He had to pay for our sins so that someday he can end evil and suffering without ending us. … If we again ask the question: ‘Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue?’ and we look at the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer is. However, we know what the answer isn’t. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he is indifferent or detached from our condition. God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself. … So, if we embrace the Christian teaching that Jesus is God and that he went to the Cross, then we have deep consolation and strength to face the brutal realities of life on earth.” [Shepherd's Scrapbook]

the gospel attacking social problems?

(Keller's new book was released today!!!)

The ideology of the left believes big government and social reform will solve social ills, while the right believes big business and economic growth will do it. The left expects a citizen to be held legally accountable for the use of his wealth, but totally autonomous in other areas, such as sexual morality. The right expects a citizen to be held legally accountable in areas of personal morality, but totally autonomous in the use of wealth. The North American 'idol' - radical individualism- lies beneath both ideologies. A Christian sees either "solution" as fundamentally humanistic and simplistic.

The causes of our worsening social problems are far more complex than either the secularists of the right or left understand. We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with powers and principalities! We have seen with the greatest wealth in the country (and sadly within the evangelical church itself). At the same time, there is a general breakdown of order- of the famiily and the morals of the nation. There is more premarital sex (and thus there are mroe unwed mothers), more divorce, child neglect, and abuse, more crime. Neither a simple redistribution of wealth nor simple economic growth and prosperity can mend broken families; nor can they turn low skilled mothers into engineers or technicians

Only the ministry of the church of Jesus Christ, and the millions of mini churches (Christian Homes) throughout the country can attack the roots of social problems. Only the church can minister to the whole person. Only the gospel understands that sin has ruined us both individually and socially. We cannot be viewed individualistically (as the capitalists do) or collectively (as the communists do) but as related to God. Only Christians, armed with the word and Spirit, planning and working to spread the kingdom and righteousness of Christ, can transform a nation as well as a neighborhood as well as a broken heart.

The only thing we bring to our salvation is our sin.
- Iain Duguid

That the world may know

Francis Schaeffer is one of the most solid writers I have ever read. While his pieces are pithy and quick, they hammer home and convict the soul. This past Sabbath I spent the time reading The Mark of the Christian. The entire book is a sermon on John 13:33-35 and John 17:21. Christ answering the question what is the greatest commandment, takes a turn and replies, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Schaeffer comments:

The Church is to be a loving church to a dying culture. How then, is the dying culture to consider us? In the midst of the world, in the midst of a dying culture, Jesus is giving a right to the culture. Upon his authority he gives the world the right to judge whether you and I are born again Christians on the basis of this observable love toward all Christians.

Later there is a final apologetic on Christ's high priestly prayer, "that they may be one, just as you, father are in me and I in you, that they may also be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me."

he notes:

Now comes the sobering part. Jesus goes on in this 21st verse to say something that always causes me to cringe. If as Christians we do not cringe, it seems to me we are not very sensitive or very honest, because Jesus here gives us the final apologetic. What is the final apologetic? "That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me." This is the final apologetic.

In John 13 the point was that, if an individual Christian does not show love toward other true Christians, the world has a right to judge that he is not a Christian. Here Jesus is stating something else which is much more cutting, much more profound: We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus' claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.

Schaeffer on Community and Hospitality

I must confess that it is a great irritant to my person when the church does not fulfill her mission, her calling. We, as the bride of Christ are called to be the salt in the world, the city on a hill, the light amongst darkness. But there aren't many denominations merely proclaim a Jesus that mimics culture, not transformation or counter-cultural. It is a sad fact that many reformed congregations do not apply irresistible grace to our everyday living, we are not hospitable or transforming culture.

One of my favorite writers (who i need to read a lot more) Francis Schaeffer deals rather harshly with this, and offers excellent counsel to me as I deal with this.

Don't start with a big program. Don't suddenly think you can add to your church budget and begin. Start personally and start in your home. I dare you. I dare you in the name of Jesus Christ. Do what I am going to suggest. Begin by opening your home for community…

How many times in the past year have you risked having a drunk vomit on your carpeted floor? How in the world, then, can you talk about compassion and about community - about the church's job in the inner city?

L'Abri is costly. If you think what God has done here is easy, you don't understand. It's a costly business to have a sense of community. L'Abri cannot be explained merely by the clear doctrine that is preached; it cannot be explained by the fact that God has here been giving intellectual answers to intellectual questions. I think those two things are important, but L'Abri cannot be explained if you remove the third. And that is there has been some community here. And it has been costly.

In about the first three years of L'Abri all our wedding presents were wiped out. Our sheets were torn. Holes were burned in our rugs. Indeed once a whole curtain almost burned up from somebody smoking in our living room. Blacks came to our table. Orientals came to our table. Everybody came to our table. It couldn't happen any other way. Drugs came to our place. People vomited in our rooms, in the rooms of Chalet Les Melezes which was our home, and now in the rest of the chalets of L'Abri.

How many times has this happened to you? You see, you don't need a big program. You don't have to convince your session or board. All you have to do is open your home and begin. And there is no place in God's world where there are no people who will come and share a home as long as it is a real home." [quote from here]

All you have to do is open your home and begin. Schaeffer takes Christ's counsel of our plank before other's speck literally here. We need to focus on ourselves, not others.

marks of an unhealthy church?

6 Marks of an unhealthy church (play on 9 marks)

1) Little or no adult baptisms. That tells you A LOT about who the church is NOT engaging. (Acts 18:10) Fellas, did you know that there are actually Christians who don't think it is odd that their church hardly ever has adult baptisms. Some don't even bat at an eye at that. Shouldn't that be kind'a embarrassing? The most I've ever personally been involved with, as a church employee, was when I worked at Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philly). It was an amazing number.

(2) It's mono-ethnic( except for rural churches). If the church is in or near a major city and the church represents a segregated mono-culture (by race and/or class) in leadership and membership you are right to think that is kind'a odd. It's 2007 not 1907. And, sadly, church leaders and members avoid living in the epicenter of major cities. (Rev. 5:8-14; Eph. 4)

(3) The church has no social witness. Members and regular attenders are not personally involved in local, state, or national social issues (wherever the curse is found) at any level. It's not a regular part of their family life. (James 1:27)

(4) Infrequent practice of the sacraments.

(5) Non-Christians are not involved in the life of the church, the personal lives of church goers, or attending worship (Lev. 19:33-34).

(6) The preaching, teaching, programs, aesthetics, music, etc. primarily appeal to 40-something women and their children. The men may be physically present but are bored and/or dead.

[Anthony Bradley]

Jesus Christ promised His disciples three things:
to know no fear,
to be absurdly happy,
and to be in constant trouble.

- GK Chesterson

This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness;
not health, but healing;
not being but becoming;
not rest but exercise.
We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it.
The process is not yet finished, but it is going on.
This is not the end, but it is the road.
All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified.

- Martin Luther

The reason that postmoderns end up with a purely individualized sense of truth is, "that the fascination with what is changing is proving more compelling than considerations about what is not changing, and what is in flux seems to offer a more immediate access to the postmodern soul than what is stable. The problem, of course, is that so many in the postmodern world have become addicts to change and their appetite for it is no panacea for the gospel. It is in the soil of our bored lives that fads and fashions sprout, each one suggesting something new, something different , something that is riding the crest of a wave of what is "in," or some new potential for us just coming into sight. This is true, not only of cars and clothes, music and hangouts, but of belief and behavior too. The adaptions which so many evangelicals are willing to make to this mood, I believe, are adaptions, not to what is innocent and inevitable, but to what is sick and deformed. These postmoderns proclivities should be challenges, not weakly accepted."


- David Wells in Only One Way?

Here is something on my mind: If we are fascinated or excited about anything more than the fact that the Son of God voluntarily suffered in our place, bearing the guilt our sins deserved, then we are in big trouble. I get the impression that many today -- both in the broadly evangelical world and in the Reformed world -- are rather bored with the cross of Christ and the justification of sinners through faith alone. But there is no greater mystery and no more glorious theme than this. Do we get bored hearing the "same old gospel?" If so, our ministries and our lives are heading for big trouble. In my opinion, there would be no more powerful influence in our lives and our churches than for us sincerely to exclaim with Paul: May I never boast except in the cross of Christ Jesus my Lord.
- Richard Phillips

[HT] Shepherd's Scrapbook

The only way to rescue our world. (is the gospel)

if you have some thoughts on church leadership, check out my previous post.
Words from Mark Driscoll, Radical Reformission (pp. 108)

St. Paul calls sin the mystery of iniquity, and human history has proven him right. The problem with every culture is not ultimately out there in the culture, but is within the people of the culture. This mystery of the crookedness of the human nature has puzzled lost people in the culture so fully that we now have a veritable army of counselors and psycologists armed with some two hundred different therapeutic systems trying to straighten people out. These systems speculate that the causes of our imperfection range from an unconscious mind filled with primal urges (Sigmund Freud), to a collective unconsciousness from our racial history (Carl Jung), to our environmental (emotional and physical) conditioning (BF Skinner), to the lack of awareness of our inner goodness (Carl Rogers). All we are missing is a theory in which a magic bunny - hidden deep in the drink cooler of a Provo, Utah, convenience store - is the center of an invisible web of mind control causing human beings to do terrible things to one another. Reformission requires that God's people address sin theologically.

First to change a culture, we must change the people in that culture. The question that arises is whether people do what they are, or if they are what they do. The answer to this is imperative, because if we are what we do then all we need to do is train people to act differently and they will change themselves. ... The unredeemed heart is a glutton for sin and death. Only God can give a person a new heart, one with new desires for a redeemed life that contributes to a transformed culture

We must begin by bringing the gospel to people so that they can be given a new heart out of which a Christian life flows. As more people live out of their new heart, new families, churches, businesses, and governments will result that together will transform culture.

Francis Schaeffer

Two beauties from Francis Schaeffer

"Each generation of the church in each setting has the responsibility of communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting."

"Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world"

more than gratitude

“Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility….I have tried…to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different…Gratitude exclaims, very properly, ‘How good of God to give me this.’ Adoration says, ‘What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!’ One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun….If this is Hedonism, it is also a somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labour.” (as quoted in, When I Don’t Desire God, by John Piper)

[HT] The Mahaney Girls

Sin Boldly?

Martin Luther, the humble father of the reformation, penned a tract to his ardent disciple Philip when he was doubting his assurance. As always Luther's words were rather countercultural to moralism and legalism, which was predominant to the Catholic church of his day. He is by no means arguing for antinomianism or a 'sin that grace may abound' gospel. Here are his words:

If you are a preacher of Grace, then preach a true, not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. For he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life in not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. . . . Pray boldly-you too are a mighty sinner.

God saves real sinners. (Praise the Lord)

Frogs are better then men

I have heard it said, "God did not die for frogs. So He was responding to our value as humans." This turns grace on its head. We are worse off than frogs, they have not sinned. They have not rebelled and treated God with the contempt of being inconsequential in our lives. God did not have to die for frogs. They are not bad enough. We are. Our debt is so great only divine sacrifice can pay it.

-John Piper from For Your Joy

I began to believe or at least live out that Jesus was not empathetic for me, that Jesus was not for me.  That Jesus is some sort of task master that I was trying to please him.  It was if He said to me, 'if this church tanks, I love you.  If you lose your vocal chords, I love you.  If no one hears the gospel, I love you.' My love for you is not based on your success for me.  If you dont get this, that in this moment that everything unravels on us.... you are going to be among the [failed] stats of ruined church plants.  You are going to be shot because you are not bulletproof.  If you dont get that Christ is saying right beside you, I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING THROUGH, you will die.  He walked what we walk, if we dont get this... we are running from Christ, not to.. And the release that we find will kill us.  If you get to that place that the gravity of the world, of this calling, that death works in us that life works in others... if you dont get that Christ is there for you... you will die because you dont find help in Christ.   Somewhere you began to believe that Christ was not an empathetic person there for you, instead He is a person to avoid...

- Matt Chandler

taken from Gravity: the weight of pastoring and the knowledge of Christ (Resurgence)

We do not have to make ourselves suffer in order to merit forgiveness. We simply receive the forgiveness earned by Christ. 1 John 1:8 says that God forgives us because He is ‘just.’ That is a remarkable statement. It would be unjust of God to ever deny us forgiveness, because Jesus earned our acceptance! In religion we earn our forgiveness with our repentance, but in the gospel we just receive it.

- Tim Keller

"The essence of idolatry is not so much the denial of the reality of God, as it is the denial of the relevance of God."  

- Iain Duguid 

"Satan is real, hell is real, people are dying, sin is alive, repentance is needed, healing is necessary and people need a Jesus who bears a sword and fights for them and men pursuing death for the same cause."

-Anthony Bradley

[HT] Sam Desocio