Last August I took a three week break from blogging. It was a great time to recharge, and so I’ve decided to take another three week break this year starting tomorrow. If you need something to read in the meantime, here are some of the top posts so far this year:
Praying Together: God’s Expectation
Hope to see you again August 29!
Here are some good reads for your weekend:
Gospel
Mark Altrogge ponders the suffering of our Savior. Meanwhile, here is another post refuting the idea that we are worth dying for. (See my post from earlier this week here.)
Idolatry
Here is a helpful interaction with Johan Herman Bavinck’s thoughts on three common idols – money, honor, and pleasure.
Family
Matthew Barrett gives us an interesting look at Martin Luther’s marriage to Katherine Von Bora as he brings out the idea that marriage is a context for growth in character.
Church
Finally, R.W. Glenn shares nine things you should pray for your pastor.
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day worshipping the Lord with your church family!
…so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
– II Corinthians 4:15b
Why does God save us? This verse tells us at least one reason. He saves us so that we might give thanks to God. He saves us for his glory. As more people are saved, more thanksgiving is offered up to God – and he is glorified. Here is a radical God-centered view of salvation.
A few questions follow:
Are we giving thanks to God? Are we reminding ourselves and each other of our great salvation so that, continually amazed by his love, we can’t stop praising God?
Are we sharing the good news so more people can be saved and give thanks to God?
And tying those questions together, are we preaching the gospel in our churches? The gospel needs to be preached because lost people need to be saved, and because saved people need to be continually reminded of what God has done for them so that they will give thanks to God.
If you are his child, his grace has extended to you. You don’t deserve it. You are not worth it. But he loves you. He chose you. He died for you. He forgave you. He changed you. He saved you. So let us join the the Psalmist and:
Enter his gates with thanksgiving,
and his courts with praise!
Give thanks to him; bless his name!
For the Lord is good;
his steadfast love endures forever,
and his faithfulness to all generations.
– Psalm 100:4-5
Here are some good quotes to ponder. Each of them also relates to the theme we have been considering in the last two posts of our worth versus God’s worth.
God’s love for you that makes much of His glory is greater love for you than if He made you your greatest treasure.
– John Piper
Worship is the proper response of all moral, sentient beings to God, ascribing all honor and worth to their Creator-God precisely because he is worthy, delightfully so.
– D. A. Carson
Faith is driven by a thankful joy that, because of Christ, God is for us when we deserve no praise at all.
– John Piper
For every look at self, take ten looks at Christ.
– Robert Murray M’Cheyne
In my last post I asked whether we are really worth dying for. I concluded that Jesus died for us not because of our own worth, but because of his love. To go further: Christ didn’t die because of my worth; my worth is found in Christ’s death. My worth is found not in myself but in Christ.
Jeremy Pierre addresses this issue of worth in his post on insecurity. Insecurity is the failure to grasp our worth, but the critical issue is where do we find our worth. He compares our culture’s view of insecurity with God’s view:
Our cultural instructors disapprove of our insecurity because it is an offense to individual worthiness. God disapproves of our insecurity because it is an offense to his Son’s worthiness.
And it is His Son’s worth that gives us worth. Pierre goes on to point out four reasons that insecurity is sinful:
So we need to flee insecurity, but not by clinging to some sense of our own self-worth. Rather we need to “abandon finding our worth in anything other than Christ and his redemptive work on our behalf.”
You can read Pierre’s entire post here.
I heard a song on Christian radio recently called “Someone Worth Dying For.” It had some good lyrics, and even a good purpose of encouraging those who are discouraged. My purpose here is not to critique the song but rather just this idea that each of us is somebody worth dying for. Are we? Really?
Starting at creation, we find that God makes us in his image. As image-bearers we are higher than the rest of his creation. It is wrong to kill or hurt another human being. As people in God’s image, we have great worth.
Then we sinned. God’s image in us was warped. We are still valuable as God’s image-bearers, but we are also sinners, depraved, and under God’s judgment. We deserve to die.
Which brings us to the cross. Listen to Paul’s thoughts on this:
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die – but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:6-8
Does Jesus die for us because we are worth dying for? No. According to Paul we are weak, ungodly, sinners. We don’t deserve to have someone die for us; rather we deserve to die for our sins. So why does Jesus die for us? Because God loves us. We aren’t worth it, but he loves us anyway.
Think of it this way. If we are worth dying for, then God kind of owes it to us to die for us. We are worth it after all! But if God dies for us even though we are not worth it, even though we are weak, ungodly sinners, then this is real love. And this is Paul’s point. Jesus died for us because he loves us, not because we are worth it.
But let’s go further. Consider Psalm 103. In this psalm, David celebrates God’s love, and it is found in two ways, both of which are related not to our worth but to our unworthiness.
First, we see God’s love in his forgiveness of our sins (v6-13). He doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve. We deserve his judgment, but we get forgiveness. This is the same thread of thought we saw in Romans 5.
Second, we see God’s love in his care for us though we are like dust (v14-19). Compared to God we are nothing. Are we worth God dying for? Even apart from our sin, we are not worth as much as God. To suggest that we are worth God dying for is to suggest that we have greater worth than God. It is essentially to make an idol of ourselves. And it is to miss the point that God loves not because we are worth it, but despite the fact that we are not worth it, that we are but dust compared to him.
To sum up, we are valuable as God’s image-bearers. But we are not worth dying for. Jesus died for us despite our sins and despite our frailty. He died because he chooses to love us. We can magnify ourselves by thinking Jesus died for us because we are worth dying for. Or we can magnify God’s love as we recognize that Jesus died despite the fact that we are not worth dying for.
Amazing love! How can it be? That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me! – Charles Wesley
Here are some good posts to ponder this weekend:
Sin
Justin Taylor gives us a helpful look at sin according to I John. Meanwhile, at Desiring God you can consider Sinclair Ferguson’s four steps to kill sin.
Love
Justin Taylor considers the relationship between love and commandments according to John.
Feelings
Brian Borgman talks about the importance of feelings in the Christian life. And Erik Kowalker share two related quotes from J. C. Ryle on possessings feelings toward Christ and the secret of a happy Christian.
Church
Jon Nielson shares a helpful post on three reasons youth stay in church after they graduate. This is important reading for both pastors and parents. And then as you prepare to gather with your local church tomorrow, ponder Justin Taylor’s warning that it only takes one generation for a church to die. May we be careful to guard and pray against that happening in our churches.
Sunday is coming. The day when you gather together with other believers to worship God. Have you ever considered the importance of preparing? What would it look like to prepare for worship? A couple of suggestions:
First, get a good night’s sleep. If you stay up until all hours of the night, it is no wonder you are groggy during the service and struggling to stay awake during the sermon. God deserves our best. Get enough sleep so you will be alert and able to give your all.
Second, deal with your sins. Examine your life. Are there sins you need to confess to the Lord? Sin hurts our fellowship with God; deal with them so you can worship God without hindrance.
Third, preview the passage you will be studying together. If your pastor is working through a book of the Bible, this should be relatively easy. If not, ask your pastor if he can put the next Sunday’s passage in the bulletin. Reading and pondering the passage ahead of time will prepare you to hear the message. (It is also a great help for your children, but that is another post.)
Fourth, pray. Pray that God would speak to you. Ask God to help you praise him as you should. Ask him to help you encourage others. Pray for the pastor, teachers, ushers, musicians, nursery workers, etc. If possible, meet with some others before the service to pray together for God to work among you.
Fifth, come with expectation. Come eager to hear the Word. Come excited to sing praises to God. Come cheerfully to give your gifts to the Lord. Come ready to build up others and serve. Come with expectation of what God might do in you and through you.
Remember that these are suggestions, not laws. I don’t do all of them every week. Sometimes some of them just aren’t possible. But they can help us come ready to worship. Imagine if we all came ready to worship God together! Let it begin with you.
How will you prepare for worship this weekend?
A giant of the Faith has finished his race. John Stott passed away yesterday. I remember reading his book The Preacher’s Portrait in college as I was beginning my training to be a pastor. And then his commentary on Ephesians which revolutionized my view of the church in seminary. Since then, I have gathered other commentaries and other books by him. I suppose I am one of countless many who have been touched in some way by his life and ministry. Here is a sampling of tributes and reviews of his life:
A review of his life by Justin Taylor including a memorial video.
A tribute at Gospel Coalition.
A brief tribute from Chris Brauns with links to more.
In a recent post, Betsy Hart suggests that many “chick flicks” amount to romantic pornography. In the same way typical pornography gives a faulty expectation of women and sex, so these movies give a faulty expectation of men and romance. It is an interesting idea to consider.
But I’m not sure I want to call it pornography. After all, pornography is about more than faulty expectations – it is about lust. Certainly many of these movies which land the couple in bed could encourage lust, but that is a different issue entirely.
And that brings up another thought. An unmarried couple landing in bed should at least be a faulty expectation – it certainly does not fit the Christian worldview. But many aspects of movies do not fit the Christian worldview, giving faulty expectations about how people should act. Should we then call these movies thinking pornography?
Again, I agree with Hart’s point, but not her word. The word carries a lot of weight and meaning beyond faulty expectations. If it is really pornography, then we should flee from it. If it is simply giving a wrong idea of the world, then we could forseeably watch it in small amounts using heavy doses of discernment as she does – even as we interact with the rest of the world using heavy doses of discernment.
One specific faulty expectation that Hart notes in these movies is that men should act like women. She spends much of her post discussing the need for men to instead act like men. While there clearly is a difference (despite our culture’s attempt to eliminate any such differences), it is tricky to define. In a separate post responding to a separate issue, Kevin DeYoung writes about what it means to be a man. While noting that the Bible has some clear teachings on this, he notes that the application can be a bit tricky. In particular we need to avoid unhelpful stereotypes that
“Real men hunt and fish. Real men like football. Real men watch ultimate fighting. Real men love Braveheart. Real men change the oil and chop firewood.” It’s one thing for pastors to give men permission to be like this. It’s another to prescribe that they must. You simply can’t prove from the Bible that manliness must look like William Wallace. If you insist on one way to be a man, you’re in danger of two things: 1) Hurting godly men who are manly but don’t do things with sports, cars, or the outdoors. 2) Making your particular expression manhood the standard for everyone else.
Good points. Meanwhile how can we positively speak about what it means to be a man? Justin Taylor gives us two links to some helpful resources and provides brief summaries of each. I encourage you to check out all these posts to ponder the issue further.
Brian J. Mikul 