Theology

Jan

2015

Trinitarian Doxologies

The Mystery of the Trinity

Minds much greater than mine have tried to probe the mystery of the being of God. We do well to grapple with the propositions of the great creeds, but ultimately reason must give way to worship.

The Creed of Athanasius

We worship one God in trinity,

and trinity in unity;

neither confusing the persons

nor dividing the nature of God.

For there is one person of the Father,

another of the Son,

and another of the Holy Spirit;

but the Godhead of the Father,

of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one –

the glory equal,

the majesty co-eternal;

what the Father is, so is the Son,

and so is the Holy Spirit.

And so we worship

I love the simple articulation of Isaac Watts:

To God the Father, God the Son,
And God the Spirit, Three in One,
Be everlasting glory given,
By all on earth, and all in heaven!

The Trinity of His Sacred Persons

Majestic are the words recorded at the beginning of Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit sermons:

To the One God of Heaven and Earth

In The Trinity of His Sacred Persons,

Be all Honour and Glory,

World without end, Amen

To the Glorious Father, as the covenant God of Israel;

To the Gracious Son, the Redeemer of His people;

To the Holy Ghost, the Author of Sanctification;

Be everlasting praise for that Gospel of the Free Grace of God herein proclaimed unto men

(From the prologue of the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit—Sermons preached by Charles Haddon Spurgeon)

A Trinitarian Hymn

Below are words of a hymn that I learned in my high school in Africa. To the tune Mannheim, it may be sung meditatively and in a worshipful way. Its words make an excellent prayer for us to pray as we tread the pathways of life to which God calls us:

1 Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us
O’er the world’s tempestuous sea;
Guard us, guide us, keep us, feed us,
For we have no help but Thee:
Yet possessing
Every blessing,
If our God our Father be.

2 Saviour, breathe forgiveness o’er us;
All our weakness Thou dost know;
Thou didst tread this earth before us;
Thou didst feel its keenest woe;
Lone and dreary,
Faint and weary,
Through the desert Thou didst go.

3 Spirit of our God, descending,
Fill our hearts with heavenly joy;
Love with every passion blending,
Pleasure that can never cloy:
Thus provided,
Pardoned, guided,
Nothing can our peace destroy.

James Edmeston, 1791-1867 (More information here)

Dec

2014

What If I Don’t Love Jesus?

A Powerful Sermon

On November 23rd, 2014, Colin Mercer, pastor of Faith Free Presbyterian Church in Greenville, SC, preached powerfully on a challenging Bible text, 1 Corinthians 16:22, which reads as follows:

If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.

It is a Bible text that has fascinated me, reminding me somewhat of a passage written by the Apostle Peter, in 1 Peter 1:8, “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory”.

Below, you may view the whole sermon from Pastor Mercer. Or you may prefer to read the notes I took–consider them a kind of digest–of the sermon.

Here is the outline of notes I wrote down while Colin Mercer was preaching–I deciphered them from my handwritten scribbles but they have not been checked against the sermon itself, so they are necessarily skeletal; I may have missed out one or two subheadings:

The Unloving Sinner (or The Vital Importance of Loving Christ), preached Sunday evening November 23rd, 2014

Of John Flavel, Puritan minister in Dartmouth in the mid 1600s, it was said that “You had to have a soft head or a hard heart to remain unaffected under his ministry.” One evening, Flavel preached on this text. Usually he would preach to draw people to a winsome Savior. But on this occasion he felt it time to warn his hearers of the seriousness of not coming to the Savior, and he could not pronounce the benediction he was accustomed to pronounce, reasoning along these lines: He could not pronounce the benediction on people who were in his audience who did not love Jesus Christ.

Luke Short, one of his listeners, a fifteen-year-old boy, heard the sermon but was not converted. He emigrated to New England where he lived for several decades. Eighty-five years later, aged 100, still in good health, remembered the sermon and dreaded the anathema. Wonderfully, he was converted and subsequently he lived another sixteen years, dying at age 116 giving evidence of a thoroughly changed heart.

Anathema = doomed to destruction, set aside; Mara Natha, two words; this verse was addressed by the apostle to pretenders of faith, who professed to be Christians. It was not addressed to those who were truly saved.

1. A Great Command

The duty of love to Christ–see Matthew 22:36–it is not an option, not a mere suggestion. What is the greatest commandment? Perhaps the man expected it to be the 6th, 7th or 10th commandment, a commandment dealing with man to man, rather than man to God. But Jesus emphasized it was of love to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Paramount Importance: Not just affection or sentiment, but faith, duty. It is not what a person kbows about, says about or does for Christ, but it is about love for Christ. Where is our heart toward Christ?

Personal: Applies to every man–salvation is a personal matter. So, to Nicodemus, Jesus could say to him, “Marvel not that I say unto thee…” This stresses the personal nature of faith. Note the Corinthians passage references Jesus with all His names and titles–LORD JESUS CHRIST. This is a full Christ whom we must receive and embrace. It is not possible to have a part Christ. In Acts 16, the Philippian jailer was to call upon the LORD JESUS CHRIST.

Preeminently: Nothing is to go before our love for Christ, not the Bible, not the church, not the sacraments. Think of the Rich Young Ruler. He loved riches more than he loved Christ. People can love things about Christ more than they love Christ. There is no other way, even though it is not popular to say this in today’s society. Preachers fudge this question about the way to God. Jesus is THE way, THE truth, THE life (John 14:6). If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

2. A Great Crime

This was in Corinth, and there may have been people there who were devoid of love for Christ. It is an appaling sin not to love Christ, a terrtible business, for example of not loving a neighbor or not to love a wife according to the vows he took, or imagine a woman rejecting her child or children. Consider siblings despising one another, or believers not loving one another–war amongst the saints–but the absence of love for Christ takes this to an altogether different level. Not to love Christ must be the greatest sin! If not to keep the greatest commandment, it must be the greatest sin.

Ingratitude: Think of what Jesus did in the incarnation–to seek and to save, not to be ministered unto… going about doing good, dying for the ungodly, bearing the wrath of God. Amazing love! We deserved none of it, and yet people despise and discount Him. He is lovely in His sinlessness, His sacrifice, His sufficiency. Imagine someone dying in a fire to save you and you are not even grateful to his family? He demands our first love yet we are idolaters. The Rich Young Ruler loved self more than riches. Self is the idol that is damning countless sinners.

Inexcusable: God sent His son to live and die for sinners. If Christ be the beloved the darling of the soul of God, think what is is to the Father, says Flavel. No good reason. What good reason can you bring for not loving Jesus? Not just talking about these things but the absence of love for Christ.

3. A Great Curse

Inevitable and Irreversible: The underlying idea is that of something being devoted to destruction on the last day. The awful sentence, “Depart from me for I never knew you.” Christ as Savior or there is loss–this is the inevitable alternative. Consider John Murray’s notes, and that this is an inevitable and irreversible situation being under the wrath of an angry God. It is impossible to trace steps back from such a condition.

Eternal: For ever under the wrath of God. Again, Matthew 7, “Not everyone who saith unto me ‘Lord, Lord’… Many will say unto me on that day… I never knew you.”

Inexcusable: No excuses will do. Reasons such as these will fail: “But I went to church.” “I had Christian parents.” “I read my Bible” I did all I could”

It would be an dreadful thing to did as an unloving sinner and to face the wrath of God. There is a full Savior for a needy soul.

More about John Flavel here

John Flavel

Image courtesy of http://www.apuritansmind.com/puritan-favorites/john-flavel-1630-1691/

Nov

2014

John Newton: I Am What I Am…

The Westminster Shorter Catechism Illustrated

John Newton, image courtesy of the Cowper and Newton Museum

Our family devotions make use of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and a couple of books that in particular help to explain and apply it. One is a book by Starr Meade, published by P&R Publishing, titled Training Hearts, Teaching Minds; the other, an old hardback published by Banner of Truth, is titled The Shorter Catechism Illustrated by John Whitecross.

We use the Whitecross book each Sunday evening to complete the seventh element. (Starr Meade’s book has six readings for the week.)

Explaining the Shorter Catechism in short readings, the book by Whitecross includes a number of fascinating and often memorable anecdotes and illustrations. Often putting a truth into an anecdote can help fasten it in one’s memory. Instructing a pre-teen child requires careful attention to resources such as this, especially when terms such as “Justification” and “Sanctification” can so easily be misunderstood.

Earlier this year, we read the section on sanctification:

Q: What is sanctification?

A: Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.

Read and Enjoy This Excerpt

Consider the following illustration that Whitecross recounts of John Newton as he illustrates the matter of sanctification:

Two or three years before John Newton’s death, when his sight was become so dim that he was no longer able to read, an aged friend and brother in the ministry called on him to breakfast. Family prayers following, the portion of Scripture for the day was read to him. It was taken from Bogatsky’s Golden Treasury: “By the grace of God I am what I am.” It was the passage read. After the reading of this text, he paused for some moments, and then uttered the following affecting soliloquy:

“I am not what I ought to be. Ah! how imperfect and deficient. I am not what I wish to be. I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good. I am not what I hope to be; soon, soon, I shall put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was–a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.” Come, let us pray.”

More on This Resource

(More from Whitecross here or you may read from an earlier [less typographically attractive] Google eBook here.)

Now You’ve Read the Article, View the Movie!

After preparing this post, I discovered this YouTube clip. Enjoy!

Oct

2014

Martin Luther, All Hallows Eve, and “Trick or Treat?”

Experts in church history make the point that Reformation Day is held alongside All Hallows Eve—more commonly known in our times as Halloween—originally commemorated because October 31^st, 1517 was the date on which Martin Luther wrote in protest against the sale of indulgences as a means of supposedly securing the release of souls from purgatory.

Johann Tetzel, the purveyor of these indulgences, was a creative salesman, encouraging his would-be clients to part with their hard-earned cash with a jingle that went something like this:

As soon as the coin in the coffer rings,
Another soul from purgatory springs!

Luther was in process of discovering the wonder of God’s matchless grace in the person of Christ—the Savior who alone achieved the salvation of sinners. No help needed from anyone! Well wrote a different hymn writer:

Upon a life I did not live
Upon a death I did not die;
Another’s life, Another’s death,
I stake my whole eternity!

In due course, Luther would come to a full-orbed realization and appreciation of the sufficiency of the merits of Christ to achieve a complete salvation. But even here, he knew enough that Tetzel and his trafficking in human souls had to be stopped.

Luther, a Musical Poet

Click to enlarge

As well as being a theologian, pastor and family man, Luther had poetic talents.

His hymn, Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott—A Mighty Fortress (based on Psalm 46)—has been referred to as “The battle cry of the Reformation.” The melody is highly singable, not least owing to its isorhythmic (all equal rhythms) shape. There are many renderings of it. Interestingly, Luther himself originated both the words and the music—note the attestation to Luther on the graphic seen here. The music itself appears to have gone through various developments; the rendering of the score used today is attributed to Johan Sebastian Bach. (*Note 1)

Listen below to the mp3 file [source citation here], or click/tap here to view the score as rendered in modern hymnals.

Speaking of Bach, it’s interesting just how appealing his work is across cultures. In a separate post, I share with you an impressive rendering of the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor played by foot on a large piano keyboard. Enjoy!

But back to Luther: Luther reveled the reality of God’s free grace shown to unworthy sinners. His journey from superstition and unbelief was a long and painful one. Along the way, he wrestled, sweated and struggled until he found a resting place in the Person of Jesus, and His work for sinners. We do well to follow in his steps!

Things to Think About

Is Luther’s Mighty Fortress your God? Read and reflect on Psalm 46.
What does it mean to you that sinners are justified by faith alone?
If God is the justifier of ungodly people (see Romans 4:5), does that not increase your love and appreciation for Jesus, the Savior, who Himself accomplished a perfect salvation?
Treasure this verse from Romans 8:31: “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”

Enjoy the Words…

A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing;
Our helper He, amid the flood
Of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and pow’r are great,
And, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.

Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is He;
Lord Sabaoth, His name,
From age to age the same,
And He must win the battle.

And tho’ this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph thro’ us.
The Prince of Darkness grim—
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For lo, his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.

That word above all earthly pow’rs,
No thanks to them, abideth;
The Spirit and the gifts are ours
Thro’ Him who with us sideth.
Let goods and kindred go,
This mortal life also;
The body they may kill:
God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever.

*Notes

1: Text: Martin Luther, 1529; tr. Fredrick H. Hedge, 1852; based on Psalm 46; Tune: Martin Luther, 1529, alt.; harm. Johan S. Bach, 1685-1750, as cited at http://www.hymnary.org/media/fetch/96175

Oct

2014

When It Is Right to Play the Organ with Your Feet!

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

This post is nothing more than great fun.

As I was preparing some notes on Martin Luther, and the connection between him and Johann Sebastian Bach (Luther wrote the score on which Bach based his music for “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”), I was reminded of a YouTube clip I find really impressive. I think you will enjoying viewing it; it will only take you a minute or two.

Bach’s music is well said to be very versatile…

Enjoy the video below!

When it’s OK to play the keyboard with your (four) feet!

Oct

2014

I Love the Reformation!

Getting Right with God

Each year, the last Sunday of October marks an opportunity to celebrate Reformation Day. I am thankful for the Protestant Reformation, and the opportunity to remember it and celebrate it.

The Reformation, an event with religious, cultural, and political implications, took root in Europe, beginning in the early sixteenth century. Martin Luther (born 1483), a monk, knew he was estranged from God. His conscience, sensitized to God’s standards of righteousness, knew no peace. In his heart of hearts, he was aware that even the personal disciplines (including self-flagellation and fasting) to which he exposed himself as he endeavored to make himself right with God were insufficient. Like the apostle Paul, in a state of awakening faith, he began to realize that he needed a righteousness greater than his own—not a righteousness of human law, but “that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Philippians 3:9).

The reality of Psalm 31 began to bear upon him—to be delivered from his condition, he needed help from on high: “In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust; let me never be ashamed: deliver me in thy righteousness.” And so, wonderfully, in 1519, he experienced the invincible power of justifying grace. The reality of the opening verses of Romans 5 became imprinted on his soul:

Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. (Romans 5:1-11)

Not only Luther, but others were awakened by this God-inspired movement. John Knox (“Give me Scotland, or I die!”), William Tyndale (translator of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into the English of his day—“If God spare my life, ere many yeares I wyl cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture, than thou doust!” he once said to a clergyman), William Farel, John Calvin (“No man is excluded from calling upon God; the gate of salvation is set open unto all men: neither is there any other thing which keepeth us back from entering in, save only our own unbelief” [Source of quote]) and others burst onto the scene, heralding the greatest news that, in the Person, and because of the Work of Jesus Christ, God accepts sinners who would turn from their godless ways and trust in the Savior appointed, welcoming them into His family.

Why I Love the Reformation

The Reformation unleashed a powerhouse of constructive activity. People, set free from wrong teaching, superstition, and ignorance, began to realize that

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof (Psalm 24:1)—therefore, there was an acceleration in scientific research and endeavor, and colonization of the far regions of the world could take into account spreading the knowledge of God’s Christ to the regions that yet lay in spiritual darkness;
Work is a good and noble calling (hence the Protestant or biblical work ethic), thus putting an end to the unproductive days spent in venerating saints as was the case in so many places in Europe;
Worship of God could be cleaned up and simplified. God is a Spirit and to be worshiped in spirit and truth (John 4:24);
The stage was set for confessional Christianity, leading to the formulation of doctrines as expressed, in due course, by the Heidelberg Catechism, the Westminster Confession and Catechisms and other carefully thought through standards;
Education could take into consideration the reality that all of life belongs to God; so the stage was set for an integrated worldview;
Economic prosperity could be achieved by ordinary people through initiative and hard work.

The Reformation spawned generations of manly men and womanly women, people with the courage of their convictions, convictions generated by the weight and force of truth. They put their money where their mouths were. They faced imprisonment, torture and death rather than recant from what they knew to be the truth. A modern Christian was once quoted in these words: “Here are my convictions; actually, if you don’t like them, here are some other ones.” Not so of our fathers in the faith. Luther is remembered for his words at the Diet of Worms, “Here I stand, I can do no other—so help me, God.”

As we think about these things, let me ask you a few questions:

Are you gripped by the power of truth—God’s saving truth in the gospel of His Son? Do you love this wonderful gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ alone saves sinners?
Are you celebrating the wonder of free grace?
Do you sing the grand, objective hymns and songs of the Reformation in preference to subjective ditties so prevalent in some modern church worship services?
Are you teaching the grand truths of the Reformation to your children?

Theology

Trinitarian Doxologies

The Mystery of the Trinity

The Creed of Athanasius

And so we worship

The Trinity of His Sacred Persons

A Trinitarian Hymn

What If I Don’t Love Jesus?

A Powerful Sermon