So my dad and I are studying a phenomenal book together. It’s called Knowing God by J.I. Packer. In it Packer breaks down the pursuit of knowledge of God. Not just studying about him, but rather finding out about him as you would a friend. As you grow in finding out about this person you begin to interact and think about this person totally different. Its an awesome book. Buy it. My pastor equates it to the necessity of a toothbrush.

I’m at a chapter in the book where Packer discusses the idea that there is only one true God worthy to be worshiped. This means that having any other ‘gods’ before the one true God is idolatry. That’s pretty straight forward right. I mean you hear all the time that we can make certain things such as tv, music, sex, or food an  idol. Simple so far.

But would if the commandment also went a little further than this. The commandment is as follows “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God.” (Exodus 20:4-5)

Packer bring up a point which I fully agree with. He says this commandment also refers to the worship of God by images. What does that mean? Does this mean we are including the representation of the crucifix and using it as an aid in worship could be idolatry? The answer to this question I believe is yes.

Consider this. When Aaron made the golden calf the idea was not to create a new cow god of sorts for the Israelites to worship. He was doing what he thought would honor God. He thought he was aiding the people since they were praising God for their rescue, they needed an image to assist them.

Packer makes two points concerning this issue. He says 1) Images dishonor God because the obscure his glory and 2) Images mislead us because they convey false ideas about God. Since we are psychologically unable to separate our brains from this visual representation (i.e. a portrayal of Christ on the Cross),  we dishonor God since we now  see him in the unglorified “man” form. Now, no question Jesus was fully man, but he was just as equally fully God. The question we should then raise is “Does this representation of God himself as a man obscure his glory?” I believe it can and does frequently.

After reading this, that idea finally hit home for me. How dare I for my own good or religious experience, degrade God’s infinite glory and power. I am fully committed to honoring him  with my life  and I find the need to contextualize God by making him like me!!!

When I survey this wonderful idea that I am incapable to grasp the full nature and image of God and his infinite power and glory, it makes the whole idea of Christ’s sacrifice so much greater. I cannot even comprehend God yet he sent his Son for me? Mind blowing. I am left in awe. This is the “power of God”. The gospel truth.

Knowing now that I don’t need the visual representation of the cross to be awed by God affirms in my mind that true worship is the faith act of laying ones self down in the sight of something that cannot be seen. I am made in his perfect image. Not Gog made in mine. Praise God for that!!

I stumbled across a book today that I had not opened in a little while. It a really great book called Life as a Vapor by John Piper. This book is full of meditations that set your eyes on heavenly things. It is a real gem.

Anyways, I paged through it and began reading on the section entitled “The Value of Learning History”. This chapter talked about the book of Jude being a clear biblical example and reason for knowing history. I might as well just post word for word what Piper’s words are but that would most likely defeat the purpose of this blog so I will put it in my own words.

In the book of Jude, the writer warns of a specific kind of people who “creep into the church unnoticed” and reap havoc on the body. The writer (Jude) begins to paint a horribly vivid picture of these men comparing them, very boldly, to Sodom and Gomorrah.

He continues, and starts rattling off historical biblical events to compare this new kind of men to.  “Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam’s error; they have been destroyed in Korah’s rebellion.” Jude 1:11 Jude speaks very nonchalantly, about these historical events.

Soo, whats Jude doing here? How does he exact the readers to know these events when, at this point in time, there’s no accessible way to read these stories. One can only assume that the attention given to these stories and the exposition of lessons through them was quite prevalent in early churches. Jude fully expects the readers to know and be able to relate these two situations to draw a lesson from them.

Now what does this tell us about our knowledge of scripture and biblical history in our very accessible to bibles age we live in. It very clearly says to me that my standard for biblical knowledge is far too low in light of my confusion when hearing these refrences.

For me I beleive the two lessons I personally am extracting from this are as follows:

1. Ebrace my lack of sufficient knowledge of scripture to motivate growth. I must realize first and formost, that I have a very poor knowledge of scripture and specifically biblical history. Why is that? Most likely that new testement syndrome where the old testement becomes relatively irrelavent because of Christ’s death. Not to say that studying the new testement and even studying it more often then the old is wrong, it si just so common to breeze right over some really meaty stuff back there. I need to motivate myself to enjoy God in these scriptures. I need to read them with Christ’s payment, gospel eyes where I look for God’s awesome and mysterious theme of human history and his foreshadowing of Jesus in these scriptures.
2. I need to realize my pride in rejecting church history thus far arguing “the church has never seen times like these”. Wow! What an arrogant statement. I do believe that each generation of Christians do face unique struggles as the church, I think that based on the lesson given in Jude that the same people and the same situations keep recurring. This is just the finger print of sin. So let us study the history of the church so far. I want to study this history with full eagerness for the Lord to show the good he brought about and the examples to follow while exposing the sad mistakes made by men in church past and the consequences of their sin.

I believe we have some tough issues to face as the new generation inheriting the church. But I gain so much confidence and faith hearing from my parents and other men and women who saw the church deal with very large issues and really bad people in years past.

I have learned much so far by just listening. I hope that I continue in this practice and eagerly read God’s Word, read about Church History, and listen to the older generation’s stories of their experiences being a part of Christ’s bride. I hope that others will join me in this as well. 

I feel very humbled today in that I don’t really feel that I could adequately write my ideas. So I have decided instead to simply leave a few quotes from heroes in the faith on the topic of adoption. Then ill just leave you with a verse on this that has blessed me greatly. Hope its encouraging to someone! Cheers.

That justification-by which we mean God’s forgiveness of the past together with his acceptance for the future-is the primary and fundamental blessing of the gospel is not in question. Justification is the primary blessing, because it meets our primary spiritual need. We all stand by nature under God’s judgment; his law condemns us; guilt gnaws at us, making us restless, miserable and in our lucid moments afraid; we have no peace in ourselves because we have no peace with our Maker. So we need the forgiveness of our sins, and assurance of a restored relationship with God, more than we need anything else in the world; and this the gospel offers before it offers us anything else…But contrast this, now, with adoption. Adoption is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, and viewing God as father. In adoption, God takes us into his family and fellowship-he establishes us as his children and heirs. Closeness, affection and generosity are at the heart of the relationship. To be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater. J.I. Packer

I once knew a good woman who was the subject of many doubts, and when I got to the bottom of her doubt, it was this: she knew she loved Christ, but she was afraid he did not love her. ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘that is a doubt that will never trouble me; never, by any possibility, because I am sure of this, that the heart is so corrupt, naturally, that love to God never did get there without God putting it there.’ You may rest quite certain, that if you love God, it is a fruit, and not a root. It is the fruit of God’s love to you, and did not get there by any the force of any goodness in you. You may conclude, with absolute certainty, that God loves you if you love God. Charles Spurgeon

mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. Galatians 4:1-7

I have been crucified with Christ. It was no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son  of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. Galatians 2:20-21

After a day or so I the Lord laying heavily thoughts of my own self and flesh actually dying on the cross with Christ, I was able to see this truely affect my perception in a specific way. I had the opportunity today to go to a Church picnic with the young adults from Solid Rock, where the main focus of the tine was to bring in the graduating class of this year and make them feel welcome. It was kindof a coming of age gathering of sorts but it was definatly fruitful by all means. There came after dinner where we were to pray over the graduates and their college careers/life ahead. As we begun to pray, all the things I had been dwelling on up to that point on us dying with Christ came full circle. I realized the nececcity to daily die to ourselves to understand the fully understand the statement “in the world but not of it”. I prayed a specific prayer for them to fall less and less in love with the world with each passing day. But after I prayed that prayer I thought about it longer. We’ve already died to ourselves!!!! We have been freed of our bondage to the world!!

 

The source of this revelation cme ultimately from God but he exposed it to me through this book The Gospel Primer. Although I have not started book reviews on my blog yet I will briefly do one for this book because it deserves it. This book is simple, blunt, short, and full of encouraging sections (call them chapters) which give different descriptions of the gospel, its power, and the place it has in the believers life. This books sole purpose is to see why and how one is to remind themselves of the gospel daily and it does it superbly!

There’s a section in the book on page 39-41, were I derived the title of this blog “All things Crucified”. Theres a part of the section where the writer refers to our crucifying of our flesh as “our love affair with the world”. I think this is a dead on way of describing this event. Our bondage to the world, our daily corrupt behaviors are not who we now are. And although sin exists in our lives as Christians, we now daily crucify ourselves with Christ. The event of me nailing Christ with my sin and the death of myself are intimately interwoven.

Friends, we are on Satan’s home-field. We’re in his stadium and the crowd is cheering his name and jeering Christ while taunting us. The only thing separating us from this crowd is Christ choosing us. We should now have absolutely no feeling of separation or difference of heart since our hearts by themselves are just as theirs are. My point in saying this is to remind myself and others that the opposition is all around us as we have been liberated from Satan’s jeering crowd. In my quiet time today I read Ephesians 6 about the Armor of God. Oh how I long to be like the Psalmist to love God’s Word as he did and see it as our weapon against darkness and our tendency to sin. Praise the Lord we have been liberated though! We can now see that this word not our bride. Our Bride is Christ and he is coming!

 

Many people might be in the boat of being slightly skeptical of bible reading plans. With no judgment towards those who do use them your explanation to those who ask you why you don’t your response is along the lines of “Well its just not for me. Good for you though. More power to ya!” or “Well, I don’t really feel fed trudging through a plan set by some old dude who studies theology for his living!” or maybe “I feel like if I were to start one, it would turn God’s word into a chore, duty, or maybe even a competitive ‘gotta get it done in a year!’ thing”. And while I would never say that these statements are in themselves wrong. Quite to the contrary, I believe that some of these concerns are quite valid. My point in exposing these statements that I have said for a while is to somehow chastising those who don’t use bible reading plans, but rather to appeal to them that it can be a unbelievably valuable resource. And recently I have found that all of the above statements that I once said out of a very common cocktail of godly and foolish pride have been untrue for me in my usage of a plan. I will merely give you an example that really blessed me in my quiet time this moring. Once again, I want to make very clear that I look down on none who feel fed by reading a specific book or subject where they feel God is speaking, correcting, and revealing himself to them in their quiet times.

This morning my bible reading plan called the Discipleship Journal Reading Plan, scheduled me to read 1 Kings 17-18. I decided since I’ve been slacking off in reading the old testament portion that I would double up to read through chapter 20. Chapter 17 begins to describe the evil reign of Ahab and how God begins to use Elijah in the time where he sent a drought for 3 years. As you begin to see the writer describe Elijah’s actions you begin to see his uncanny faith and ferocity in doing the work of the Lord. Elijah was outraged over the complacency of the Israelite people and their worship of other gods. Elijah’s driving force in his journeys and actions of a prophet resemble that of a modern day husband in a movie who swears to avenge his wife’s death by traveling the world and finding her murderers himself. One of the stories described in chapter 17 is where Elijah stays with a widow from Zarephath and her son. Because of the drought the widow and her son are dying of starvation. Through Elijah, God gives her house food, raises the son from death, and builds the womans faith in God. This story is seemingly irrelevant to the grand story of Ahab’s evil and the resulting drought. Through the story of Elijah destroying the prophets of Baal at Mount Camel, I was left awestruck at how confident Elijah’s faith was in God’s work. He was so faith driven that God was going to reveal himself through miracle to the people that he acted without hesitation and goes so far as even taunting the priest of Baal to send rain.

So far, Ive been pretty blown away by how God worked through Elijah. I went on to my reading of the new testement. The scheduled reading was Luke 4. I read first about the temptation of Christ. I went on to read about Christ teaching in the synagogue at Nazereth. Jesus reads about the prophecy of the coming savior an makes it clear it he the scripture speaks of. Jesus the refers to the exact story in 1 Kings about Elijah and the Widow. This obviously was not coincidental I’m sure for the passages to be in the same daily reading. As Christ speaks to his peers, he says in blunt words how they will reject him. Jesus speaks to them almost as if they are now anticipating him to reward them since he is the messiah. But Jesus goes on to explain that there were many widows in that area in Elijah’s time but God led him to that one. Jesus is basically saying I think “Some will gain from my coming and some will not.” The crowd is outraged and proceeds to try and kill him.

My point in explaining all this is to show you how God revealed certain things in His scripture via the usage of the reading plan. I was able to see this connection between these old testament accounts and how they point forward to the savior. This structural method of breaking apart God’s Word, I have found is not as systematically dutiful as one might think. In being able to have a concise tool for familiarizing myself with God’s word, I have been wonderfully fed. A duty it is still, but a delightful duty at that were I am able to daily see God’s Word as a holistic narrative of God’s great redemption of mankind. It has been wonderful. It is not he only way to go and trust me there are pitfalls along the way, but God is good and it remains his word. He will surely reveal himself to you through His word no matter what method you use. I only need to remind myself daily that I am becoming more and more familiar with God as I read his word. I must bask in it. Feel starved without it. It is my bread. It refreshes my soul. God is great and we are blessed to be able to so much as carry around a bible or two without even flinching. Let us remind ourselves of this lest it looses value to us.

So, I decided after my persecution of bloggers had to come to an end. My revelation was that this practice was not only a useful resource for others to see what you are up to and spending time dwelling on, it is indeed also a very humbling tool to reform and shape my thoughts, meditations, revelations, conversations, and real life situations. I am quite confident that using this unlikely channel that I once scoffed at, will be used by the Lord to conform me to his likeness. I must confess that seeing some of the most respected theologiansof our day (even the old guys) use blogging to speak to the world on matters of the heart and addressissues in our culture. It is my stubbornness and pride that i have not till now see its usefulness.

I say all this partially jokingly and another part quite honestly. My heart has been very much changing recently as I’m sure many of my friends could attest to. Mostly good, but yet I am still a sinner so there is sin to go along with it. I have been consumed with a passion for the word of God, a deepening of my knowledge of Christ’s sacrifice, and greater understanding of the attributes of God. I’m learning a lot and have a lot left to learn. Jesus addresses the pursuit of godly knowledge in the parable of the sower and explains that we need to have our roots deeply sunk into the ground lest we whither and die when the sunbeats down on youeven though you shot up fast and furiously out of the ground. Being a biology major and having had over three semesters of biology things being drilled into my brain I have come to know a thing or two about plants and the proper funtion of their roots. There are many plants and fungi who are not too impressive above ground. They are simple and healthy looking but still do not have wonderful radiant flowers budding off of them. But the wonderful thing about some of these plants or fungi is they have massive intricate roots that span great lengths and depths. Even when you see some mushrooms that sprout yards from each other, they are connected by the same underground system of roots. These plants or fungi or whatever are able to extract much much more than your average plant root. These things are masterpieces. I think God intends for us to walk the journey set before us just as these living things funtion day to day. They are constantly soaking up, never stopping, always eager to have more. But yet they do not spit it right back to the top of the plant to make its growth happen any more rapid than it was designed to. I confess that the more I learn the more I do not mearly use for my understanding of Chirst’s sacrifice and understanding the attributes of God. I rather use this rapid intake of wonderful knowledge and use it to almost hijack the growth that God is working in me by speaking alot quicker than I listen. And while I realize that Jesus’s parable is more of addressing those who stop at the passion part and do not see the need to go deeper in knowledge of God’s word, its been used to remind me of this biological situation and used it to see the other flip side of Jesus’ warning.

*Sigh* Now I’m just ranting. I must say I am very very tired. I hope my blogs from now on are not as “flabby” and scattered as this one but these are the things that were bouncing around in my mind today. Well, this was day 1. Pretty sure I will get used to this practice. I’m off to bed now. 

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