A Meditation on Matthew 1:21

Matthew 1:21 (ESV) ²¹ She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

She…one word…She. She…will bear a son. There was a woman long ago, favored by God and chosen by his providence to bring forth the Son of God. She was purposed before the ages began, her seed’s victory promised after the devilish deception of darkness which came upon Eden, and she had the good news realized in her womb in the fullness of time. She will bear a son. Through her womb, through a lineage, through a home, through the myriad upon myriads of lives and stories and deaths over time…the myriad of the line of Abraham would find fruit in her belly by the power of the very God who names the stars. Yes, she would be overshadowed – this story is not about her. The Almighty’s work in her was his own. And she rejoiced in it. To bring about in flesh, the Son sent from the Father's side, to the scorched earth, cracked with Sin below. And This Son would not be just anyone. He would not be a no name nomad wandering about building ancient furniture with his own calloused hands…though he he was and built many a chair or table. No, this Son would also have a name. Yet not a name unknown to the people of God. Yeshua, Joshua, The Lord Saves…a fitting name. Yes, there was a Joshua long ago who led great exploits…but only so the name might have greater weight when placed upon another. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Yes, there is something about that name. This name, which was commanded of an angel to Joseph, and placed upon the child by this earthly father of clay would be a name which would be spoken upon the lips of men, women and children for all times. Some of these lips would drip guile and spew venom, yes, even “Crucify!” Yet for others that name would be…

• the name above all names
• the name of sweetness
• the name of joy
• the name of comfort
• the name of hope
• the name of grace
• the name of forgiveness
• the name of propitiation and sacrifice
• the name of passion
• the name of peace
• the name of friendship with God
• Yes, Yes, the name of salvation…for he will save his people from their sins…

His people – who are they? O for the manifest wisdom and grace of God. That before he flung into being billions of galaxies he knew his people. This Jesus knew them, yes his people were foreknown and predestined, then called, then justified, then glorified…to be like God – his people, changed from dust to glory. His people…red, black, yellow, white - from every tribe tongue and language his people would be called forth. His People...that I am in such a number I know not why. Sick pride stay far from me, for salvation has nothing to do with your worth. But the one whom is named Jesus, his work, his worth, his passion, his grace, his friendship, his salvation is my only boast.

Matthew 1:21 (ESV) ²¹ She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

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The Innkeeper

The Innkeeper A great little poem available on Desiring God. Read and/or listen today - meditate on God's faithfulness in sending Christ...

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Transhumanism and Human Nature -- Radical Human Enhancement in the News

Al Mohler has some brief comments about radical human enhancement (making super-human humans through either biotechnology or computational technology embedded (sometimes called "wetware") in humans Transhumanism and Human Nature -- Radical Human Enhancement in the News If you really want to be bored out of your skull - check out a paper I wrote on the topic in 2001. ...

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Martin Lloyd Jones - High Tech Style

Logos Libronix Users and fans of Martin Lloyd Jones (yeah, I know the club is HUGE - at least I know a couple of folks) will be pleased to see the following pre-publication announcement. If you can get past the pictures on the biographies (I think smiling was not allowed back then) I think you will be encouraged by the life of this 20th century preacher. A quick quote that I found encouraging:

Do not keep a record or an account of your work. Give up being book-keepers. In the Christian life we must desire nothing but His glory, nothing but to please Him. So do not keep your eye on the clock, but keep it on Him and His work. Do not keep on recording your work and labour, keep your eye on Him and His glory, on His love and His honour and the extension of His kingdom. . . . Have no concern as to how many hours you have given to the work, nor how much you have done. In effect leave the bookkeeping to Him and to His grace. . . . There is no need to waste time keeping the accounts, He is keeping them. And what wonderful accounts they are. May I say it with reverence, there is nothing I know of that is so romantic as God's method of accountancy. Be prepared for surprises in this Kingdom. . . .

Let me make a personal confession. This kind of thing has often happened to me in my ministry. Sometimes God has been gracious on a Sunday and I have been conscious of exceptional liberty, and I have been foolish enough to listen to the devil when he says, 'Now, then, you wait until next Sunday, it is going to be marvellous, there will be even larger congregations'. And I go into the pulpit the next Sunday and I see a smaller congregation. But then on another occasion I stand in the pulpit labouring, . . . preaching badly and utterly weak, and the devil has come and said: 'There will be nobody there at all next Sunday'. But, thank God, I have found on the following Sunday a larger congregation. . . . You never know. I enter the pulpit in weakness and I end with power. I enter with self-confidence and I am made to feel a fool. It is God's accountancy. . . . He is always giving us surprises. . . .

We should not only recognize that it is all of grace, but rejoice in the fact that it is so. . . . The secret of the happy Christian life is to realize that it is all of grace and to rejoice in that fact. . . . Was not this [Jesus'] own way? . . . He did not look at Himself, He did not consider Himself and His own interests only; He made Himself of no reputation, He laid aside the insignia of His eternal glory. . . . He humbled Himself, He forgot Himself, and He went through and endured and did all He did, looking only to the glory of God. Nothing else mattered to Him but that the Father should be glorified and that men and women should come to the Father. That is the secret. Not watching the clock, not assessing the amount of work, not keeping a record in a book, but forgetting everything except the glory of God, the privilege of being called to work for Him at all, the privilege of being a Christian, remembering only the grace that has ever looked upon us and removed us from darkness to light.

It is grace at the beginning, grace at the end. So that when you and I come to lie upon our deathbeds, the one thing that should comfort and help and strengthen us there is the thing that helped us at the beginning. Not what we have been, not what we have done, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. The Christian life starts with grace, and it must continue with grace, it ends with grace. Grace, wondrous grace.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures, (Eerdmans, 1965) p. 130-32.

And it seems he took his own advice. Here is an exert from the final days of his life:

Towards the end of February 1981, with great peace and assured hope, he believed that his earthly work was done. To his immediate family he said: 'Don't pray for healing, don't try to hold me back from the glory.' On March 1st, St. David's Day and the Lord's Day - he passed on to the glory on which he had so often preached to meet the Saviour he had so faithfully proclaimed. The MLJ Recordings Trust Web Site - http://www.mlj.org.uk/biog.htm accessed January 10, 2006. Emphasis added.

I think we all need heros of some sort - those we look to to see an example worthy of following. Primarily we see this in Jesus, he is our only pattern. And then there are women and men throughout history, both those we know and those we know at a distance, of whom we rightly can obey the injuction to the Hebrews:

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.

Hebrews 13:7

Martin Lloyd-Jones - keen intellect, medical doctor whom God coverted to faith in Jesus Christ, called by God to wear the banner of "preacher," one who has gone before us worthy of our consideration. Now, should I spend the 150.00 bucks to have some of his works on my hard drive...ahhhh! Not a decision for tonight ...

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The Science of the Soul

In the next several months (after I sort through a load of seminary reading) I will be reviewing a book entitled Science of the Soul - Scientific Evidence for Human Souls by Kevin Favero. I look forward to the read as the topic is of great importance in our day of physicalist interpretations of human persons. ...

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Pray for John Piper

Yesterday a letter went out from John Piper explaining that he has been diagnosed with protate cancer. The letter itself is an encouragment to me in how to face life's trials. Add the Piper family to any prayer list you may keep and remember them in this time. Link Pray for Piper ...

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Church - an Old Vision

Long ago, someone described a Christian church....

And we afterwards continually remind each other of these things. And the wealthy among us help the needy; and we always keep together; and for all things wherewith we are supplied, we bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Ghost. And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration. Justin Martyr The First Apology, chapter LXVII

Reading of Scripture, verbal instruction and exhortation in the same, prayer, communion, an offering taken to use for widows, orphans, the sick, the slave, the poor and the stranger among them. Not a bad vision for today's conusmeristic churches. Not a bad vision at all.

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Theology, Black No Sugar

A good short little article on reading the heavy stuff of the Faith... ...

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A Wonderful Providence - A Rare Convergence

With the holiday season of downtime converging with the cranking out a bunch of e-mails while watching the Fiesta Bowl tonight - the Lord God has wrought something wonderful in my life which I think has maybe happened but one time before. It may be difficult to see, but the above image is a wonder of grace in my life. It is a screen shot of an Inbox. Yes, an Inbox...an empty one at that. I have returned all my e-mail as of 7:30 pm CST on this 2nd day of January in the year of our Lord two thousand and six. I realize this may never happen again as long as I live. God be praised! Yea, but the e-flood cometh! ...

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Wordliness is now cool...someone must be pleased

"The first thing is to delay as long as possible the moment at which he realises this [worldliness] as a temptation. Since the Enemy's servants have been preaching about 'the World' as one of the great standard temptations for two thousand years, this might seem difficult to do. But fortunately they have said very little about it for the last few decades. In modern Christian writings, though I see much (indeed more than I like) about Mammon, I see few of the old warnings about Worldly Vanities, the Choice of Friends, and the Value of Time. All that, your patient would probably classify as 'Purtanism' -- and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life. -- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters"

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Teenagers Mix Churches for Faith That Fits - New York Times

There is a name for this in my parts - "Multichurching" - not a good scene...we are American consumers in all things - inlcuding church and religious stuff. Link over at The New York Times ...

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Puritan Luv - Chapter 2 – Why We Need the Puritans

In the fourth section of this chapter Packer removes any fog about his purposes in this book. He writes “This present chapter is, I confess, advocacy, barefaced and unashamed. In modern parlance this chapter is Packer’s “shameless plug” for the Puritan view of life. Packer begins the chapter by discussing the mud which has been made of the name “Puritan” throughout the ages. He realizes that he may be climbing a wall of resistance in his readers who just might think that we have nothing to learn from the Puritans. Recounting the recent scholarship in Puritan life and thought, Packer makes his case that the opinion of these people as backward, repressed, darkened hangovers from medieval times has been removed in the area of the scholarship opening new doors to understanding a truly Puritan culture. Packer then contends that the main thing we have to learn from this people, who suffered and labored under extreme difficulty, is maturity. Maturity - a solid, weighty Christianity as compared to the light weight faith of contemporary North American evangelicalism; this is the gift of the Puritans to us today. The middle of the chapter covers the several areas we can learn from these people who have gone before us. Packer expounds six themes: 1) An integration of their daily lives – seeing all of life as united in one purpose, the honoring of God with all that we are and do. 2) The quality of their spiritual experience – both theological and affective, head and heart, their joy was in God, and their mortification was at their sin. 3) Their passion for effective action – they felt it a Christian duty to reject idleness and laziness for a zeal for reform. 4) Their program of family stability – O for the devotion of the Puritan for “family order, courtesy and family worship” (Packer, 25) such are lost in our day of family entertainment, distraction, busyness in the name of activities. Packer’s cautious critique of the prayerlessness of evangelicalism was kind and gentle – the Puritans would be harder on us. Woe to us a prayerless people before the throne of God. 5) Their sense of human worth – each individual in the image of God – each individual racked and ruined by sin in great need of redemption. Though their view of human depravity is often reviled as pessimistic, their value of the human soul is great in contrast to today’s world saturated by Darwinian assumptions that declare us of little to no value beyond our so called social utility. And finally 6) An ideal for church renewal – and this flowing from reformed pastors, renewed to the calling of gospel ministry and prayerfully working for the good of his people. The final section of the chapter focused on how the Puritan view of life is fine medicine for the ails of our day. Packer lists three groups as candidate for reform under the pious pen’s of the Puritan pastors. The first he calls restless experientialists, those who “…have fallen victim to a form of worldliness, a man-centered, anti-rational individualism, which turns Christian life into a thrill-seeking ego-trip.” (Packer, 31). For such the Puritans offer God-centeredness, the primacy of the mind, a demand for steadfastness and humility, a recognition that feelings go up and down and that God tries us in times when we are emotionally downtrodden, worship as the primary purpose of all of life, the need for regular self-examination, and the great purposes of suffering to help his children grow in the faith (Packer, 31). Strong medicine for needy souls. The second group mentioned are entrenched intellectuals, those whose need for absolute intellectual perfection in all matters of doctrine cause them to be a bit like a cadaver at the wedding feast of the Lamb…or in the midst of the wine filled party with Jesus at Cana. To these the calling of the Puritans to holy affections, practical theological application, and to a zealous love affair with the living God are a potent elixir. The final group mentioned are the disaffected deviationists, here I could not help but thing “Emergent.” These are those who began as evangelicals but due to a plethora of reasons, have left hurt and/or angry. They are the haters and self proclaimed victims of the evangelical subculture. They see evangelism as intellectually infantile, trite, and even deceptive in its offer of the “good life” as defined by the pop prophets of evangelical blessing theology. To these the salve of the Puritans is a lofty and large, and yes mysterious God. To these is offered a God of redemptive love, which “converts, sanctifies, and ultimately glorifies sinners” (Packer 33). To these is offered the salvation of God, the truth of suffering, spiritual conflict and sorrow, and the protection of God amidst the dangers, toils and snares. Overall, this chapter was effective as a shameless plug. No shame in offering a counterview to all sorts of our goofiness today. My experiential focus, my entrenched intellectualism, and my self-righteous disaffectedness can all use some salve. I look forward to the read.

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Puritan Luv - Chapter 1 Introduction - A Quest for Godliness

Packer begins this chapter with a discussion of Redwoods; large, stately majestic and awesome trees. Such are the Puritans – looming figures of evangelical spirituality towering over the landscape of Anglo-American church history. The introduction of the book primarily features Packer’s reasons for loving the historical Puritan’s and their legacy passed on in their writings. Packer lists seven things he counts as debts he owes to men like John Owen and Richard Baxter – men unworthy of mercy who left us gems of the faith for generations to come. The seven things Packer rips off are as follows. 1) A realization of our continuing sinfulness and the necessity of self-suspicion and mortification over our sin. 2) The Sovereignty of God and the particularity of redemption, 3) The value of discursive meditation; the meditative manner of the Psalms where a man talks to himself before the Almighty, 4) A vision for the pastoral office 5) To see how transient life is and to life in light of death and eternity, 6) A vision of the wholeness of the work of God – reformation/renewal, and finally 7) All Theology is Spirituality – the very practical nature of our Vision of God and his truth. To these I say, Amen! Theology is the thrilling of the soul with the beauty of God for our everlasting joy, satisfaction and hope in the midst of suffering. I need to have that hammered into the skull – no fearing the T-word.

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Give me some Good Ole Puritan Luv...

I am reading a book by JI Packer (yes, that guy) for a class on personal spiritual disciplines. Part of the gig is to read and review chapters from A Quest for Godliness - The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life. I will roll out the chapter summaries here over the next couple of weeks. If you find yourself thinking: "Puritans - Yucky!" This book is definitely for you. ...

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Historia ecclesiastica: WHY LAUGHTER IS AN APPROPRIATE RESPONSE TO BARNA & HIS ECCLESIOLOGICAL PROPOSAL

I don't know Michael Haykin - but I have a class under him in two weeks - I really look forward to meeting him. The reading list he gave us for the class is great - and this blog entry is pretty funny: A short exerpt:

There will be some, I am sure, picturing themselves as brave souls going where few in our day have gone before—and so experiencing the adventure of the Christian life in all of its white-water intensity—who take up Barna’s suggestions and try to do Christianity without Church. In so doing, they will be sculpting their Christianity into the shape of our culture or sitting down to supper with the devil with a short spoon—either metaphor is frightening—and abandoning one of the key verities of the Faith.

There is no "churchless Christianity" this is a great myth of our times... ...

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The So Called Revolution...

Justin Taylor has links to several reviews of George Barna's "Revolution" - the reviews at the bottom by Ken Miller, Michael Haykin and Chris Treat look very interesting. As to some other sort of kooky things Barna is in to - see my entry from June 2005... ...

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50 Best Robots Ever

Continuing in the 50 best category, Wired Magazine has offered its list of the 50 best robots of all time - some real, some fictional. My vote would be for Optimus Prime - autobot leader and Transformer from my kiddo days. But I do agree with Engadet - What about Johnie Five? ...

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Texas Church Plans to Give Away a House

Is this just sick or what? I am all for swimming in a culture with people - connecting with people where they live etc...but is there some prostitution going on here before the world? Have the money changers moved venue and now offer the gospel in the name of prize packages and giveaways? Why not just find some poor people in the church and give them a house? A sad thing going on here... http://www.newsobserver.com/24hour/religion/story/3006864p-11693734c.html HT-Challies ...

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Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years

PC World has a fun article up about the 50 greatest gadgets of the last 50 years. Of course all such lists are pespectival in nature, but it is fun to see all the gizmos over the last 1/2 century. Now, whether or not these have made life "better" is a deep and philosophical question. That we must save for other days... Here is the list of these boogers that I have owned:

• Walkman
• iPod
• PalmPilot 1000 (US Robotics!)
• Atari Video Computer System (1977)
• Sony Betamax (1975) Yep, we bought one, but when it went the way of the T Rex we got a VHS :)
• Iomega Zip Drive (1995) - though I went with a Syquest EZDrive first!
• Play, Inc. Snappy Video Snapshot (1996) - used it with our VHSC camcorder to digitize video
• Milton Bradley Simon (1978) - this was the first Christmas that I found out the secret about Santa Claus

...

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Hell

What the Bible does say about the reality of divine judgment. Not a doctrine for rejoicing, rather for weeping... No person ever should be flippant or trivial about the teaching of Jesus about Hell. Nor should one be silent or evasive either... A helpful primer by John Sampson is found here A quote from the post:

Dr. John Piper wrote the following, "Hell is unspeakably real, conscious, horrible and eternal-- the experience in which God vindicates the worth of his glory in holy wrath on those who would not delight in what is infinitely glorious." (God's Passion for His Glory, pg. 38)

PS - Don't buy the Bahnsen DVD featured on the site :) HT - Challies

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