Exposition that Does Not Nourish

I have long been convinced that a non-expository sermon is no sermon. But these wise words from Tozer is worth re-reading for every bible expositor (italics added):

Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the Church of the Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such a way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment whatsoever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.

-A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (Christian Publications: 1993, p. 9-10

Yet he want books!

From Spurgeon's famous sermon on 2 Timothy 4:13 where Paul asks Timothy to bring him his books/parchments:

We do not know what the books were about, and we can only form some guess as to what the parchments were. Paul had a few books which were left, perhaps wrapped up in the cloak, and Timothy was to be careful to bring them. Even an apostle must read. . . . A man who comes up into the pulpit, professes to take his text on the spot, and talks any quantity of nonsense, is the idol of many. If he will speak without premeditation, or pretend to do so, and never produce what they call a dish of dead men's brains—oh! that is the preacher. How rebuked are they by the apostle!

He is inspired, and yet he wants books!

He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books!

He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books!

He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books!

He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things which it was unlawful for a men to utter, yet he wants books!

He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books!

The apostle says to Timothy and so he says to every preacher, "Give thyself unto reading." The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains, proves that he has no brains of his own.

Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible. We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master's service. Paul cries, "Bring the books"—join in the cry.

A Fountain of Pollution Within

Heart Corruption
A Prayer from the Valley of Vision






O God, may Thy Spirit speak in me that I may speak to thee.
I have no merit, let the merit of Jesus stand for me.
I am undeserving, but I look to Thy tender mercy.
I am full of infirmities, wants, sin; Thou art full of grace.

I confess my sin, my frequent sin, my wilful sin;
all my powers of body and soul are defiled:
a fountain of pollution is deep within my nature.
There are chambers of foul images within my being;
I have gone from one odious room to another,
walked in a no-man's-land of dangerous imaginations,
pried into the secrets of my fallen nature.

I am utterly ashamed that I am what I am in myself;
I have no green shoot in me nor fruit, but thorns and thistles;
I am a fading leaf that the wind drives away;
I live bare and barren as a winter tree, unprofitable,
fit to be hewn down and burnt.
Lord, dost Thou have mercy on me?

Thou hast struck a heavy blow at my pride, at the false god of self,
and I lie in pieces before Thee.
But Thou hast given me another master and lord, Thy Son, Jesus,
and now my heart is turned towards holiness,
my life speeds as an arrow from a bow towards complete obedience to Thee.
Help me in all my doings to put down sin and to humble pride.
Save me from the love of the world and the pride of life,
from everything that is natural to fallen man,
and let Christ's nature be seen in me day by day.

Grant me grace to bear Thy will without repining,
and delight to be not only chiselled, squared, or fashioned,
but separated from the old rock where I have been embedded so long,
and lifted from the quarry to the upper air,
where I may be built in Christ forever.

The Gospel vs. Religion

I love this description on the difference between religion and the Gospel that Mark Driscoll and his team at Mars Hill put together. It characterizes the ministry that I am involved in at the Indonesian Christian Church as we commit to reach the lost and teach the reached to live a Christ-centered life.

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures . . .” -1 Corinthians 15:1–4

What is the Gospel? The word gospel simply means “good news.” The central message of the Bible is the gospel, or good news, about the person and work of Jesus Christ. In 1 Corinthians 15:1–4, Paul provides the most succinct summary of the gospel: the man Jesus is also God, or Christ, and died on a cross in our place, paying the penalty for our sins; three days later He rose to conquer sin and death and give the gift of salvation to all who believe in Him alone for eternal life.

The great reformer Martin Luther rightly said that, as sinners, we are prone to pursue a relationship with God in one of two ways. The first is religion/spirituality and the second is the gospel. The two are antithetical in every way.

Religion says that if we obey God He will love us. The gospel says that it is because God has loved us through Jesus that we can obey.

Religion says that the world is filled with good people and bad people. The gospel says that the world is filled with bad people who are either repentant or unrepentant.

Religion says that you should trust in what you do as a good moral person. The gospel says that you should trust in the perfectly sinless life of Jesus because He alone is the only good and truly moral person who will ever live.

The goal of religion is to get from God such things as health, wealth, insight, power, and control. The goal of the gospel is not the gifts God gives, but rather God as the gift given to us by grace.

Religion is about what I have to do. The gospel is about what I get to do.

Religion sees hardship in life as punishment from God. The gospel sees hardship in life as sanctifying affliction that reminds us of Jesus’ sufferings and is used by God in love to make us more like Jesus.

Religion is about me. The gospel is about Jesus.

Religion leads to an uncertainty about my standing before God because I never know if I have done enough to please God. The gospel leads to a certainty about my standing before God because of the finished work of Jesus on my behalf on the cross.

Religion ends in either pride (because I think I am better than other people) or despair (because I continually fall short of God’s commands). The gospel ends in humble and confident joy because of the power of Jesus at work for me, in me, through me, and sometimes in spite of me.

Christ-centered sermon

Jollyblogger wrote something that resonates within my heart:

Our response to the gospel is always that of repentance and faith, not action. We do not "do" something to apply the gospel, the gospel "does" something to us. Thus I have been very cautious in offering "to-do" lists from texts.

On the other hand I am aware that the Bible is full of commands that demand obedience. Yet, while acknowledging that, I am still left with the Colossians 2:20-23 conundrum.

20 Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: 21 “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? 22 These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. 23 Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
In other words, telling people what to do and not do has little or no value in getting them to do or not do what they should or shouldn't do. This doesn't mean there aren't things we should and shouldn't do, but do's and don'ts won't get it done.

So how do we resolve this conundrum? T. David Gordon in his book Why Johnny Can't Preach offers some "practical" thoughts:

I know that there are those who are terribly afraid that such Christ-centered preaching will lead to licentiousness; but I categoricaly deny it. I've witnessed with my own eyes the difference between believers who suffer through moralistic preaching and those who experience Christological preaching. The former are never as strong or vibrant in their Christian discipleship as the latter. In theory, we all say we believe, for instance, that good works are the "inevitable" fruit of saving faith. I not only say this; I believe it.

I believe that as people's confidence in Christ goes they do, ordinarily and inevitably, bear fruit that accords with faith. Thus, there is no need for some trade-off here, or some alleged dichotomy suggesting that we need to preach morality if we are to have morality. No; preach Christ and you will have morality. Fill the sails of your hearers' souls with the wind of confidence in the Redeemer, and tey will trust him as their Sanctifier, and long to see his fruit in their lives. Fill their minds and imaginations with a vision of the loveliness and perfection of Christ in his person, and the flock will long to be like him. Impress upon their weak and wavering hearts the utter competence of the mediation of the One who ever lives to make intercession for them, and they will long to serve and comfort others, even as Christ has served and comforted them.

Meaning Out of Chaos

If you think you live a rather ordinary life in an ordinary time, watch this clip. It's the best way to catch up with the massive changes that are happening in front our nose in a global scale. All that in just under five minutes. Then you can contemplate what it means to live your live in these volatile times before the God of history who once said through His apostle: "Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is" (Ephesians 5:15-16).

Or of course, we can just ignore all that and go back to the same old, same old pattern. May God help us to find some meaning out of these global changes, some of which end up in chaos, organized or not.

How to Deal with Guilt

Perhaps the acid test whether or not we have receive the grace of God is by examining our typical responses in dealing with guilt. Ravi Zacharias in his book Cries of the Heart wrote that there are at least five different responses that humanity has me to battle with guilt: Expel guilt by irreverence, smother guilt by pride, conceal guilt by fear, dismiss guilt as cultural, and deny guilt by innocence. After explaining each one in turn, he wrote (p 116-118):

“When expelled by irreverence, guilt makes a life in mutual harmony unlivable. When smothered by pride it makes one’s life unaccountable. When concealed by fear it makes the pain unbearable. When dismissed as cultural it makes morality untenable. When claiming absolute innocence before God it makes that claim unjustifiable. When guilt surrenders to the grace of God, it makes the sin forgivable . . . On our way to a solution for how to respond to guilt a very subtle though enormous chasm was crossed beyond forgiveness was offered. The focus shifted away from guilt.

Ingmar Bergman may have captured this huge chasm better than even he realized in his play Wild Strawberries. It is the story of a professor who had come before a judge to be sentenced. The judge looked at the accused and declared,

“I find you guilty.”
“Guilty of what?” demanded the professor.
“You are guilty of guilt,” said the judge.
“Is that serious?” asked the accused man.
“Very serious,” answered the judge.

Think for a moment. If guilt is all we have to deal with where do we go? How does one remove guilt? . . . If only one can take the next step and say, “I am guilty of sin,” then the answer comes triumphantly – “I have a Savior for you.” He went to the cross to carry that penalty and pay a price. It was not cheap; it was God’s priceless gift of His Son to bear the guilt brought by sin of the world."

Worst Days, Best Days

This Gospel-focused quote from Jerry Bridges' book The Discipline of Grace is worth reflecting from time to time:

Pharisee-type believers unconsciously think they have earned God’s blessing through their behavior. Guilt-laden believers are quite sure they have forfeited God’s blessing through their lack of discipline or their disobedience. Both have forgotten the meaning of grace because they have moved away from the gospel and have slipped into a performance relationship with God . . . Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.

Mother's Day Prayer

I asked the following prayer, which is part of a prayer called Family from the Valley of Vision, to be included in the church bulletin yesterday as we celebrated Mother's Day. The second paragraph is particularly outstanding to me. We prayed yesterday for our mothers, those of us who have mothers who do not yet believe in Christ Jesus, those who are not in good terms with their mothers, those who have lost their mothers, those who long to be mothers, and those who are about to be mothers (there are three in our congregation - one actually delivered today!), and those who receive the gift of singleness hence never become biological mothers but be mothers to many in Christ.

O God, I cannot endure to see the destruction of my kindred.

Let those that are united to me in tender ties

be precious in thy sight and devoted to thy glory.


Sanctify and prosper my domestic devotion, 
instruction,
discipline, example,
 that my house may be a nursery for heaven,

my church the garden of the Lord,
 enriched with trees
of righteousness of thy planting,
 for thy glory;


Let not those of my family who are amiable, moral,
attractive,
fall short of heaven at last;

Grant that the promising appearances of a tender conscience,

soft heart, the alarms and delights of thy Word,

be not finally blotted out,
but bring forth judgment
unto victory in all whom I love.

Piper on Sleep

John Piper on Sleep:

Sleep is good and absolutely needful. But let us find the amount we need to function fully for God and take no more. Why? Because Paul said in Ephesians 5:15f, "Look carefully then how you walk, no as unwise men but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil." Time is precious because the stakes are so high in an evil age. Let us beware of frittering away precious hours in fruitless dawdling and excessive sleep.

I remember the story of a German New Testament professor who was asked why he rose so early and worked so hard. He answered: "Ich spare den Schlaf fuer die ewige Ruhe!" ("I am saving sleep for the eternal rest.") Of course this can be abused so that you kill yourself with heart failure or turn yourself into a first class grouch. But perhaps the time has come to sound Paul's trumpet again from 2 Corinthians 11:27, "... in toil and hardship, in hunger and thirst, through many a sleepless night..."
Let us take heed to ourselves and to our appetite for sleep, redeeming the time for the days are evil.

Read the full-text of his sermon from where the quote above is taken here.

When Quiet Time is Too Quiet

I love getting tips on how to sustain our spiritual discipline. Here is a good set offered by Pam Farrel. Among the twenty tips she mentioned on how to awaken our quiet time, these are the ones I like best. Read the entire twenty in the Discipleship Journal article.

1. WRITE A LETTER TO GOD about your life. Give it to a friend to mail hack to you in three months. In the letter, talk to God about the areas of your life that are bothering you. Write about how you'd like to grow and what attribute of His you'd like to see more clearly.

2. WRITE OUT AND PERSONALIZE Scripture by inserting your name into promises relevant to your life or current struggles. For example, I would personalize Ps. 84:11 in this way: "No good thing does God withhold from Pam when she walks uprightly." Many of the Bible's promises come to life and seem more powerful and relevant when personalized in this way Spend some time meditating and praying over verses that you personalize. I once copied a set of verses and strung them together as a personalized love letter from God's heart to my own. I have it framed and hanging in my room. Those personalized verses help me keep a trig view of God.

8. WRITE OUT a Phil. 4:8 list. What is lovely to you, worthy of praise, excellent, etc.? Hang the list in a place where you tend to be grumpy, such as above the washer and dryer or on the dashboard of your car for that frustrating commute!

11. PRAISE JESUS FROM A TO Z. For example, "Jesus, You are amazing ... Jesus, You are beautiful...." This activity will challenge you to think deeply about who Jesus is and why you love and serve Him. As you praise Jesus using each letter of the alphabet, spend some time meditating on each word you use to describe Him. Thinking deeply about Him is more important than racing through each letter of the alphabet as fast as you can.

16. SPEND A PERIOD OF TIME FASTING from food, TV, or a hobby to spend more time with God. If you're able, combine your fast with a day at a quiet retreat center, the beach, the mountains, or even tucked away in a library to reflect upon God's Word and His hand in your life.

Which ones are your favorites?

Nicholas Wolterstorff on Justice

My Monday morning is brightened with an email in my inbox notifying me
the content of the latest issue of the Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 37
Issue 2 (June 2009), which has a few articles focusing on Nicholas Wolterstorff and his new book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs. Wolterstorff is the Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale Divinity School. As many others, I thoroughly benefited from his highly-acclaimed work on the subject, Until Justice and Peace Embrace (Eerdmans, 1983, second. ed 1994).

Here are the articles I referred to above:

*NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF'S JUSTICE: RIGHTS AND WRONGS:/ AN
INTRODUCTION (p 179-192)* Paul Weithman

*THE LANGUAGE OF RIGHTS AND CONCEPTUAL HISTORY (p 193-207)* Oliver O'Donovan

*WOLTERSTORFF, RIGHTS, WRONGS, AND THE BIBLE (p 209-219)* Harold W. Attridge

*DOES HE PULL IT OFF? A THEISTIC GROUNDING OF NATURAL INHERENT HUMAN RIGHTS? (p 221-241)* Richard J. Bernstein

*GOD'S VELVETEEN RABBIT (p 243-260)* Paul Weithman

*JUSTICE AS INHERENT RIGHTS: A RESPONSE TO MY COMMENTATORS (p 261-279)* Nicholas Wolterstorff

The last article above is Wolterstorff's response to his commentators. Here is the abstract of the article:

The critical comments by my fellow symposiasts on my book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, have provided me with the opportunity to clarify parts of my argument and to correct some misunderstandings; they have also helped me see more clearly than I did before the import of some parts of my argument. In his comments, Paul Weithman points out features
of the right order conception of justice that I had not noticed. They have also prodded me to clarify in what way rights are trumps; and both his comments and Bernstein's have prodded me to clarify certain aspects of the theistic account of human rights that I offered. Attridge's comments lead me to see that I was perhaps over-zealous in emphasizing the objective aspects of the semantic range of dikaiosunê as used in the New Testament and downplaying the subjective aspects. And O'Donovan's comments have provided me with the opportunity to make clear that my account of rights is not an immunities account that presupposes nominalism, and to emphasize the ways in which it is not an asocial individualistic account.

What is Worship?

Worship is the strategy by which we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God. Worship is the time and place that we assign for deliberate attentiveness to God – not because he’s confined to time and place but because our self-importance is so insidiously relentless that if we don’t deliberately interrupt ourselves regularly, we have no chance of attending to him at all at other times and in other places
Eugene Peterson, Leap Over A Wall

Seven Pounds, Sense of Guilt and God's Grace

I like this flick. It brings to surface a side of human nature that often is neglected in typical Hollywood movies. The plot revolves around a man called Tim Thomas (Will Smith) who because of multitasking (driving and texting) found himself in a car crash. Seven people who were passengers in his car died. Everyone died but him.

He then tried to live his life so radically different after the crash. He quit his job as an aeronautical engineer, then chose 7 people to whom he would be doing something good; donating what he has to them freely, voluntarily with no strings whatsover attached. These noble acts he did as his way to pay his 'penance', silent the roaring sense of guilt within him.

He donated his lung lobe to his brother, Ben.
He donates part of his liver to a child services worker named Holly.
He donated a kidney to George, a junior hockey coach.
He donated bone marrow to a young boy named Nicholas.
He donated his beach house to Connie Tepos
He donated his corneas to Ezra Turner, a blind meat salesman who plays the piano.
He donated his heart to Emily Posa, a self-employed greeting card printer.

To help the last two individuals, Ezra and Emily, Tim has to literally die. Hence, this movie has a sad ending. Tim fills the bathtub at a motel he stays (he is now homeless as his house is already donated) with ice water to preserve his vital organs, climbs in, and then commits suicide by pulling his box jellyfish into the water with him.

If you are confused what the title "Seven Pounds" refers to (as I was before), someone suggested that it is derived from the expression "pound of flesh" which in its original meaning refers to a terrible burden or debt which has to be repaid by whatever mean. Originated in Shakespeare's play Merchant of Venice, 1596. In this case Will Smith's character feels that he has to pay a pound of flesh for each of the seven lifes lost in the car accident for which he felt that he caused.

I think this is a powerful movie. Interestingly, it was mostly reviewed rather negatively. A reviewer at New York Times, for example, wrote the following:

An I.R.S. agent who wants only to help people. This is a nice, small joke that provides a few grace notes of levity in what is otherwise a lugubrious exercise in spiritual bushwa. For all its pious, earnest air, “Seven Pounds” cries out to be remade as an Asian horror movie, so that the deep, creepy grotesqueness of its governing premise might be allowed to flourish, rather than to fester beneath the surface.

As it is, the movie is basically an inverted, twisted tale of revenge. Ben Thomas, Mr. Smith’s character, is in essence a benevolent vigilante, harassing, stalking and spying on unsuspecting citizens for their own good, and also to punish himself. Why such misery should also be inflicted on an innocent, affirmation-hungry audience — and also on the marvelous Ms. Dawson, who plays one of Ben’s victim-beneficiaries — is another matter entirely.

But maybe I’m approaching this in the wrong way. Maybe “Seven Pounds” isn’t a spiritual parable about redemption or forgiveness or salvation or whatever, but rather a collection of practical lessons. Don’t drive while using a BlackBerry. Fertilize your rose bushes with banana peels — sorry, that was a spoiler. But please, whatever you do, don’t touch the jellyfish.

I’m serious. Don’t.

I think the above reviewer missed the entire plot. On the contrary, the movie powerfully portrays how it feels to live with a strong sense of guilt. It haunts someone and stubbornly comes back at us without fail throughout our lives. Perhaps the clearest way to really know the most basic foundation of our life is our reactions to failure. How do we handle failure and deal with a sense of guilt. In that movie, Tim spent his entire life trying to redeem himself and seek forgiveness to be able move on, but he can't.

This tells something about us. As fallen creatures we all made mistakes. We can't escape from that sense of guilt. The greater the mistake, the more haunting the feeling we have as a consequence of that mistake. Have you been forgiven? Have you experienced God's unconditional forgiveness so that you can move on? Or are you still beating yourself up?

As Christians, we can say that our foundation is the grace of God. But in reality it may not be that grace of God. But the quality, the purity, the intensity of our commitment to God. In the final analysis, it's still resting on your performance. It's still resting on you. It's still resting on something beside God. We will never experience the grace of God if we always treat it as a challenge to be a more committed person, a more faithful person, a morally better person. We need to stop trying, and start resting on the the grace of God.

Helping Our Leaders Not to Become Destructive

In my line of research, I have been fascinated with the topic of destructive or toxic leadership for quite some time now. What is interesting in the myriad of findings in extant literature is the fact that destructive leadership happens not only because of the leader, but also because of the followers (and the environment). In other words, the role of followers in turning good leaders into bad is pivotal, particularly those with unmet basic needs, negative self-evaluations, and psychological immaturity (Padilla, Hogan, & Kaiser, 2007).

I am intrigue by that last characteristic: Followers' psychological immaturity.

Padilla et al. (2007) in their Leadership Quarterly article highlighted that psychologically immature individuals are susceptible to collude in destructive acts their leaders initiate. They drew on famous works of Freud, Milgram, and Kohlberg in suggesting that between 60 and 75% of Western adults conform to their leaders and respect rules; this tendency to conform can be easily manipulated in such a way by the leaders that the followers then engage in immoral behaviors just because their bosses say so. Further, Padilla et al (1997:184) wrote:

"Persons lacking a firm sense of self tend to identify with cultural heroes and to internalize their values. Weierter's (1997) model of charismatic relationships also proposes that followers who lack a clear sense of self will adopt the values of charismatic leaders, which then enhances their self-esteem. Although these vulnerabilities might apply to any immature adult, they apply well to the young (Popper, 2001)—for instance, the Hitler Youth, the Manson family, or Mao's Red Guard. When impressionable followers internalize a destructive leader's vision, they can become committed to a destructive enterprise-conformers can become colluders (Hoffer, 1951; Kets de Vries, 1989; Weierter, 1997)."

The implication is loud and clear for churches and other organizations. We need to ensure that the body of Christ is developed into maturity not only spiritually but psychologically, which really means they need to have a healthy self-concept rooted in what Christ has done on the cross, a Christ-centered set of core values, and a Christ-exalting life vision which will give their lives anchor, meaning, and direction.