A Permanent Move
April 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Greetings to whoever is still listening to this conversation. This is Joe here, back from a long hiatus, only to say goodbye again.
As you know, the conversation on this blog has been a one-sided one for the last few months, due to my absense. Essentially, I took the time to reevaluate my blogging desires. I believe Larry had more or less done the same even a few months before that.
During this time, we have come to the conclusion that this blog has run its course. It ’s time to break up the band, so to speak. Time to go our separate ways, never to communicate with one another ever again. Ok, you know that is ridiculous because we live right next to each other! What I am really saying is that we are now going to keep our own separate blogs.
Larry can be found at redemptiongroanings.blogspot.com
He has been keeping this site for the last few months now. I am sure you will continue to find much of the same sound insights he has up there now. I will, of course, be a faithful subscriber and reader.
I will be found at JoeCrispin.com
What you will find out here, well, that you never know. For I have essentially chosen to blog in one place only, with whatever topic that comes to mind. I hope it turns out to be enjoyable and encouraging.
I must say to you Lar, that it has been a pleasure to have blogged with you for more or less a year and a half. Before beginning this blog, neither of us were into the blog scene. And now, I believe blogging is a part of our lives. I am certainly learned much through keeping this blog, and I enjoyed doing so with you my good friend. Even if our readership wasn’t huge, the dividends were great. So I give thanks for your efforts and all who joined in.
Of course, there may come a day when we return to this site and join up once again. Maybe even with a few others. I am not sure. But until then, may the Lord grant us the grace to blog well in our separate spheres to His glory!
Checking out for now,
Joe
Jesus Wants the Rose!
April 24, 2009 | 1 Comment
This video was my first exposure to the ministry of Matt Chandler. Needless to say, I’ll be checking out some more of this sermons:
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Cursed, In Hope
April 22, 2009 | 1 Comment
Cursed, In Hope
Today is Earth Day, and for me that is a reminder of both the curse of sin and the hope of redemption.
Last week I heard a message in which one of the most well-known Bible teachers in the world cited an evangelical statement of commitment to care for God’s creation. The statement said, ‘We commit ourselves to extend Christ’s healing to the creation.’ The Bible teacher then said, with great cynicism, ‘I’ve got news for you: He cursed it! He started all the weeds and disasters.’
After quoting another evangelical statement saying, ‘The cosmos in all its beauty, wildness and life-giving bounty is the work of our loving Creator,’ the Bible teacher continued, ‘What did they do, skip Genesis 3? He cursed it. God created it good, man sinned, and He corrupted it.’
This grieved me, because it seems to be a gross distortion of the Biblical teaching. Yes, some Christians have become so extreme in their commitment to preserve the environment that they seem to care very little about preaching the saving message of Christ crucified and risen for sinners. This is a grievous error. But it does no good to react to that error by plunging to error on the far opposite side of the pendulum, and doing it with great arrogance and smugness as well.
In reality, what this Bible teacher did was not distort the truth, but truncated it. Yes indeed, God did curse the entire created cosmos as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve. But that is NOT the end of the story, as this Bible teacher seemed to suggest so adamantly. Sadly, the Bible teacher did not mention how Romans 8 fit into his scheme of good creation, sin, and curse. In that chapter, Paul writes,
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Yes, the creation was subjected to futility; it was cursed. But it was cursed in hope, that one day the entire creation will be set free from the curse of bondage and corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. The created world that God cursed is groaning for its coming redemption from that curse, as part of the glorious triumph of the Son of God over sin, death and hell on the Cross.
How a reputable Bible teacher could so casually, cynically speak of God’s curse on the creation without mentioning this verse is unfortunate. And whether this Bible teacher agrees with me or not, I believe that Earth Day is a day for Christians to both grieve and celebrate. To grieve, because our sin is what condemned this creation to its current state of bondage and corruption. But also to celebrate, because one day Jesus the Redeemer will set the entire cosmos free from the curse to the praise of His glorious, extravagant grace.
What makes a person viable?
April 21, 2009 | 1 Comment
What makes a person viable?
In the debate about abortion, many people say that taking the life of this person is no problem, because he/she is not viable (meaning, capable of surviving outside the mother’s womb):
But I don’t know of anyone who would say it’s ok to take the life of this person, who is also not viable:
This is my daughter Halle, and while I love her to death, I was reminded this past weekend how non-viable she really is. Michelle went away for the weekend and I was left home alone with her. It dawned on me that if I chose to leave the house, lock the door and not come back, then Halle would be dead by the time Michelle returned home on Sunday afternoon.
Even at nearly two years old, Halle cannot survive without the care of adults. In that sense, she is not viable. Yet if I really did leave her alone in the house to suffer and die, our society would condemn my actions as cruel, inhumane and unthinkable. Indeed, it would be.
And it is equally cruel, inhumane and unthinkable to take the life of the child in the top picture who is, like Halle, also not viable.
Halle deserves to live, though she is not yet viable. So do the unborn.
Do You Know Anyone Who Can Speak Badly of You?
April 21, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Sometimes when people pass away, one of the flattering things that people say about the deceased is, ‘You can’t find anyone who can say a bad thing about (insert name here).’
But it doesn’t seem like Jesus would be impressed with such a eulogy. He says,
‘Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets.’ (Luke 6:26)
Christians ought to strive not to be liked by everyone, but to be faithful to Jesus. If we do that, some people will love us. And others will have plenty of bad to say about us.
Another Reminder to Groan
March 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment
I have a continual need to be reminded that this world is not as it’s supposed to be. Sometimes a photo really is worth more than a thousand words:
Here, some children are recovering their belongings from their flooded home in Caldas, Colombia. Hundreds of people were forced to leave their homes after heavy rains caused the river Mandalay to overflow its banks early Friday in Caldas, northwestern Colombia.
Thank God, one day the entire cosmos will be set free from its bondage to decay, and enter into the freedom of the glory of the children of God!
Joni Eareckson-Tada: Strength in Suffering
March 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment
This morning I had the privilege of sharing a biographical message with some of the home-schooled children in our church on one of my heroes of the faith, Joni Eareckson-Tada. It has been more than 40 years since she was paralyzed from the neck down because of a diving accident, yet she speaks of God’s goodness, sovereignty and love with a joy and vitality that far surpass most of us who have never suffered like her.
If you’ve never heard Joni speak, you can watch this video below from a recent talk she did at Dallas Theological Seminary (if you can’t see or view the video, click here). Also, you can listen to or watch her talk from the 2005 Desiring God National Conference, which was outstanding.
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RSS Reminder
March 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment
RSS Reminder
My recent blogging lull over the weekend and into the beginning of this week reminded me of the value of RSS feed readers. I know this blog does not receive a ton of traffic, but for the faithful few, an RSS reader will make your blog surfing a lot easier. Instead of checking one blog at a time, RSS allows you to keep track of all the blogs you visit, and automatically notifies you when the blogs you’ve subscribed to are updated. That way you don’t have to keep going back to them only to find nothing has been updated.
It has been a big time-saver for me. If you’ve never understood what that funky orange thing was and want to get the RSS reader set up, this tutorial from Abraham Piper will get you going in minutes.
Cold Stone and the Image of God
March 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Cold Stone and the Image of God
A few weeks ago I went to Cold Stone Creamery and saw the image of God on display. Nobody was preaching a sermon or leading a Bible Study, nor was there any earth-shattering event like a bolt of lightning or a burning bush. But for a few minutes I watched one young woman reflecting the image of our Maker before my very own eyes.
When God created the universe, we’re told in Genesis 1:2 that the world was formless and empty. The rest of Genesis 1 explains how God brought order out of the disorder and chaos to fashion a world in which man and woman could flourish. God took the raw materials of creation and, figuratively speaking, got His hands dirty making something of the material world.
Then, after creating Adam in His image, ‘The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it’ (Genesis 2:15). Being made in God’s image means being made to create; not out of nothing, like God did, but by making something of the world which God has given to us. Genesis 1 depicts God bringing order out of chaos, and then He tells the man, ‘Now you do in the Garden what I have done throughout the world.’
To work is to take the raw materials of a particular domain and to draw out its potential, molding those raw materials into something which enables the human society to flourish. Over the centuries, many commentators have taken this charge to work and keep the garden as dealing with more than just agriculture, but the formation of human culture and civil society.
Which brings me back to Cold Stone on that Wednesday night a few weeks ago. The young woman making my cup of Mint Mint Chocolate Chocolate chip is bearing the image of our Creator God, whether she knows it or not. What has she done in making me that sundae? She’s taken some raw materials (mint cream, one chocolate brownie, and chocolate chips), she picks up her tools and begins to make something out of those raw materials.
She cultivates them, digging and molding and fashioning them into something more than was there to start with. Mint cream is good, and so is a brownie and chocolate chips. But in molding them together, she’s brought out some of the potential of those raw materials. She’s made a little bit of culture. She is doing in her domain what God had called Adam to do in the Garden of Eden thousands of years before her.
If the girl who ‘dug up’ my dessert happened to be a Christian, then surely she would also want to lovingly share the Gospel with her co-workers and customers, and to work with integrity and faithfulness as a way of adorning the teaching of Christ as her Savior. But even in the simple act of making my delicious dessert, she has reflected the glory of God. Her job is, therefore, full of dignity and value in God’s sight. She should experience joy in the awesome privilege of imaging forth her Maker in the domain He has called her to, whether she had any opportunities to share the Gospel that day or not. For God is a lavish Creator, and He created us to be creators.
I used to go to Cold Stone just to fill my belly; but now I also admire the God who is being reflected in our most ‘ordinary’ acts of making something of His world.
Is anyone else getting hungry?
Aiming for the Center
March 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment
D.A. Carson, from his talk at the 2007 Gospel Coalition conference:
[There is a tendency today] to assume the Gospel, while devoting creative energy and passion to other issues: marriage, happiness, prosperity, evangelism, the poor, bioethics. The list is endless. But this overlooks the fact that our hearers inevitably are drawn toward that which we are most passionate. My students are unlikely to learn all that I teach them. They’re most likely to learn what I am excited about. If the Gospel is merely assumed, while relatively peripheral issues ignite our passion, we’ll train a new generation to downplay the Gospel and focus on the periphery. It is easy to sound prophetic from the margins; what is urgently needed is to be prophetic from the center.
You can download the whole talk here.
Love and Free Will
March 20, 2009 | 1 Comment
In Paul Young’s The Shack, the author puts these words in the mouth of Jesus:
“To force my will on you,” Jesus replied, “is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful or healthy.”
This is a common argument among theologians and scholars, who claim that in order for God to genuinely love His created people, He must never impose His will on them but must always preserve their freedom to either embrace or reject His love. But this seems to me untrue, both on the grounds of Scripture (John 6:44 or Romans 9:16, for instance) and common sense.
Imagine you are this child’s parent. You have expressly told him NEVER to go near the street without an adult, but there he is. How do you respond? What does real love and a genuine relationship with your son compel you to do in this moment? Do you say, ‘Well, since love must allow you freedom of will even when your choices are not helpful or healthy, I guess I must let you venture out in front of that car coming to end your life.’
No loving parent would do such a thing. If this were your child, you would impose your will on that child and forcibly remove him from the road, so as to save his life. That is what genuine love does with rebellious children.
I am glad that is how God has loved me. Instead of allowing me to destroy myself for the sake of preserving my autonomy, He sovereignly, decisively moved upon my will and drew me to Himself, opening my eyes to see glory in the face of Jesus Christ, when once He looked foolish and ugly.
O how precious is the sovereign, omnipotent love of Jesus Christ. Without it there would be only everlasting torment and misery.
The Great Enemy of Gospel-Centeredness
March 19, 2009 | 2 Comments
Yesterday, thanks to the wise words of a friend of mine, I was reminded of something I had written last year on the Seeking Him blog. As I have searched my own heart, this seems to me to be such a great danger that it is worth being reminded of again and again. Here’s what I wrote (a year ago yesterday, oddly enough):
Beware of being a Pharisee about the Gospel.
I know these two things appear contradictory, and they are. A Pharisee is by nature not gospel-centered, and truly embracing the Gospel crushes the roots of a Pharisee. Yet I have seen in my own heart the subtle way that a genuine desire to promote the glory of the Gospel can turn into a cold-hearted, arrogant condemnation of those who don’t meet my standards of gospel-centeredness.
When I say beware of being a Pharisee about the Gospel, I mean beware of looking down upon others and casting judgment upon those people who you think are not as gospel-centered as they should be. In reality, none of us are as gospel-centered as we should be. But I’ve sensed in me a tendency toward pride, an attitude that we have now ‘arrived’ because we know the centrality of the gospel for all of life. We hear sermons and grumble that they are not gospel-centered enough. We look down on certain church leaders or authors or small-group members because ‘they just don’t make the gospel central enough.’
The Gospel tells us that there is absolutely nothing we can do to merit the favor of a holy and just God…and even passion for the gospel can be something we use to try to win God’s approval and make ourselves feel superior to others. Nothing is farther from the true spirit of the gospel than to use the gospel to elevate yourself or your knowledge above those of other people.
In the same way that many ‘Calvinists’ turn off other Christians to those doctrines because of their condescending attitude toward those who don’t believe like them, so also can genuine lovers of the gospel distort the gospel by being condescending toward those who aren’t as ‘gospel-centered’ as they think they are. Few things will make the gospel as unattractive as a person who uses it to feel superior to others who they regard as ‘unenlightened’.
So beware of this, brothers and sisters. I have been placing a high emphasis on the centrality of the gospel lately, urging others to make the main thing the main thing. With all my heart, I believe that is right, and should be contended for at all costs. Yet I have seen in my own soul this tendency toward becoming a Pharisee about it. It is ugly, and it is an awful distortion of true gospel-centeredness. It will only hinder the spread of the gospel we so long to see cherished.
For the sake of the gospel, let’s resist it at all costs!
What is the Gospel?
March 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment
What is the Gospel?
If you had 90 seconds, how would you explain the Gospel?
Mark Dever takes a stab at it in this video (for some reason the video doesn’t seem to show up on my google reader; if you can’t see or view the video, click here):
What I particularly like about the way Dever presents this is how he begins and ends with the big picture of cosmic renewal and redemption, but also clearly communicates the heart of the Gospel as Christ’s substitionary life and death as the only way to become an heir of that cosmic redemption.
It seems that many Christians in this day and age can’t seem to strike that balance as well as Dever does. They either focus on the cosmic scope of redemption to the exclusion of personal faith in Christ, or they so emphasize personal faith that one would never know that the Gospel is about something bigger than their own personal salvation story.
What do you think?
Why Bother with Stem-Cells?
March 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Why Bother with Stem-Cells?
So why should Christians bother themselves with a social issue like stem cells? Won’t this distract us from the Lord’s work of preaching the Gospel and saving souls?
I want to look at these questions in some detail tomorrow, but for now here is an insightful quote from Richard Mouw in his excellent book, When the Kings Come Marching In:
“Recently I heard a very pious man say, ‘I don’t mean to suggest that it is wrong to pay attention to some of these social issues — but I do wish we would spend more time talking about the things of the Lord!’
“Of course it is of the utmost importance that we talk about the things of the Lord. But the important question is this: what are the Lord’s things? Doesn’t Jesus agonize over attacks on the dignity of those persons for whom He spilled His blood? Doesn’t He grieve over men and women who have been imprisoned because they witnessed for justice and righteousness? Isn’t the Son of God angered by the oppression of widows and orphans [and unborn babies, I might add!], and by the schemes of those who plot destruction of all that the Creator has called good?
“If so, then many so-called ’social issues’ are ‘the things of the Lord’.”
Thoughts?
A Primer on Stem Cells
March 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment
A Primer on Stem Cells
The Crossway blog has an interview with Scott Klusendorf, the president of Life Training Institute. He trains pro-life advocates to persuasively defend their views and has just written a book called The Case for Life, in which he aims to equip those committed to life to engage our culture regarding these challenging issues. This book is especially timely in light of President Obama’s executive order repealing the policy that limited federal tax dollars for stem cell research.
Especially disheartening in Obama’s announcement was his statement of the need to separate science from ideology, a statement that would lead to complete anarchy if followed to its logical conclusion. In in his interview, Klusendorf answers this question about Obama’s statement:
6. President Obama said that ideology should not interfere with science. What do you make of that claim?
Well, the claim that ideology should not get in the way of science is itself an ideological claim, and a highly controversial one at that. I found this the most troubling part of his speech. If he is correct that scientific progress trumps morality, one can hardly condemn Hitler for grisly medical experiments on Jews. Nor can one criticize the Tuskegee experiments of the 1940s in which black men suffering from syphilis were promised treatment, only to have it denied so scientists could study the disease. Pro-life advocates are not anti-science. We are not anti-cures. We just insist that scientific progress must be tied to moral truth.
Read the rest of the interview here.
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