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How to Study the Bible

Posted by Dan C. on

by Martin Luther

Martin Luther said,

“I study my Bible as I gather apples. First, I shake the whole tree that the ripest might fall. Then I shake each limb, and when I have shaken each limb, I shake each branch and every twig. Then I look under every leaf.

“I search the Bible as a whole like shaking the whole tree. Then I shake every limb—study book after book. Then I shake every branch, giving attention to the chapters when they do not break the sense. Then I shake every twig, or a careful study of the paragraphs and sentences and words and their meanings.”

So there you go. If you want a good Bible study method, try Martin Luther’s. It will last a life time.

Unless You Repent You Will All Likewise Perish

Posted by Dan C. on

Courtesy of John Piper and Desiring God Ministries.

There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Luke 13:1-5

If this text were taking place today, we would come to Jesus and say, “Did you hear about the miners last week who were buried 300 feet underground by an explosion north of Frankfurt, Germany?” And Jesus would look into our eyes like nobody has ever looked before, and he would say, “Do you think this happened to these miners because they were worse sinners than the other Germans? Or that busload of church young people that were killed in Kentucky, do you think that they were worse sinners than the other Americans who escape every day? I tell you, No; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Have you ever had an encounter with anybody like that? You come to them with a concern or with a puzzling theological question, and they look you right in the eye and say, “The most urgent issue is your own soul. If you don’t get right with God, you are going to perish.” No one ever spoke like this man. He was always blood-earnest about person commitment. When presented with a problem, he dealt with a person. His speech was salted with fire. Nobody slept through a conversation with Jesus.

What Is At Stake: Four Words

These five verses are filled with awesome implications about the way the world really is. And it is not the way people think it is. My main aim today is to impress upon our consciences that people are perishing. If we are going to be the kind of witness for Christ that we ought to be, we need to know and feel what is really at stake. And what is at stake is that unrepentant people are perishing.

To unfold this text I simply want to focus on four words in the key sentence in verses 3 and 5. The sentence is, “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” The four words I want us to focus on are “all,” “likewise,” “perish,” and “repent.”

1. “All”

“Unless you repent you will ALL likewise perish.” A group of people come to Jesus and tell him about how Pilate had murdered some worshiping Galileans and taken their blood and mixed it with the blood of their sacrifices—their sheep and pigeons and doves. It’s as though some anarchists should break into our church this morning during the Lord’s Supper, cut the necks of a few worshipers, and pour their blood into the communion cups. It was a horrible thing that Pilate did.

The people don’t say it, but Jesus hears it in their voices—these slain Galileans must have done something horrible for God to allow something so horrible to happen to them. In other words extraordinary tragedy must signify extraordinary guilt.

Now ponder for a moment what you would have answered at this point. What does your theology of suffering and sin call for in the face of this kind of tragedy?

What Jesus said was this. He said, “No, their sin was not extraordinarily horrible. It was ordinarily horrible, just like yours. And if you don’t repent, you too will experience a horrible end, all of you.” In other words instead of saying that they are no more sinful than we are and being amazed at their death, he says that we are just as sinful as they are and should get ready to die like they did.

What Jesus teaches, then, is that all of us are extremely sinful. We are so sinful that calamities and disasters should not shock us as though something unwarranted were coming upon innocent human beings. There are no innocent human beings. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “There is none righteous, no not one” (Romans 3:10). And what should amaze us in our sin is not that some are taken in calamity, but that we are spared and given another day to repent. The really amazing thing in this universe is not that guilty sinners perish, but that God is so slow to anger that you and I can sit here this morning and have one more chance to repent.

2. “Likewise”

“Unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” Does this mean that all unrepentant people will be murdered in the act of worship? No, it can’t mean that because in verse 5 Jesus says that we will all perish like those who were killed by a falling tower. We can’t all die just like the Galileans who were murdered and just like those on whom the tower of Siloam fell. “Likewise” must mean something else.

It can’t just mean die, since that’s going to happen to those who repent to. Everybody dies until Jesus comes again. But Jesus says implies that if we repent, we will not perish.

So what does Jesus mean when he says that all unrepentant people will likewise perish? I think he means something like this: you see what a horrible end those people came to; they didn’t think it was going to happen. O they knew they were going to die someday; but they didn’t know what that would mean. The horror of their end took them by surprise. Well unless you repent, that is the way it is going to be for you. Your end will be far more horrible than you think it is. You will not be ready for it. It will surprise you terribly. In that sense you will LIKEWISE perish.

The parallel between you and them is that there was something dreadful about the way they ended, and there will be something dreadful about the way your life ends. They were not expecting that kind of end and you will not be expecting it either (Luke 17:27–30). Only repentance can make you ready to meet God.

3. “Perish”

“Unless you repent you will all likewise PERISH.” Now what does “perish” mean? Sometimes the word simply means die in the sense that we all will die physically. But that would not fit here since Jesus implies that if we repent, we will not perish. “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish.” If you DO repent, you won’t perish. So perish is something more than simply die a physical death.

Here’s what I think it means. Since Jesus connects it directly to sin and since he says it can be escaped by repentance, I take it to mean final judgment. He is referring to something beyond death. Those Galileans were taken unawares and experienced a horrible end. Unless you repent, you too will be taken unawares and experience a horrible end—the judgment of God beyond the grave.

“Perish” in the New Testament

The word perish often refers to this terrible judgment in the New Testament. For example in John 3:16 it says, “For God so loved the world that whosoever believes on him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” So perishing is the alternative to having everlasting life. The same thing turns up in John 10:28. Jesus says, “I give them eternal life, and they shall not perish for ever.” Perishing is what happens to you if you don’t have eternal life.

In 1 Corinthians 1:18 Paul says, “The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Perishing is the opposite of being saved by the cross of Jesus. And in 1 Corinthians 15:18 Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised . . . those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.” In other words perishing is something that happens beyond the grave.

Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed unto men once to die, and after that comes judgment.” And Jesus describes that judgment in Matthew 25 as a separation of the sheep from the goats, and says, “The one will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (v. 46). Perishing is the eternal punishment that people fall into when they die if they have not repented. That’s how serious sin is. And we have all sinned, and sin every day. “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

A Practical and Utterly Urgent Message

Now don’t treat this as mere church talk. Write it on a card and use a rubber band to bind it on the visor of your car. All those people out there will perish if they do not repent. Tape it in your wallet to see it every time you buy something—that clerk will perish if she does not repent. Your children will perish, you parents will perish, your neighbors will perish, your colleagues will perish if they do not repent. This is not irrelevant church talk. This is just as practical as the AIDS brochure we all got in the mail from Dr. Koop. And it is a thousand times for urgent and more important.

In fact let us learn from the surgeon general’s office how the world expects people to respond to their fellow men when they know they are in danger of perishing. All you can lose when you get AIDS is your earthly life. And Jesus said, “Do not fear what kills the body and after that can do nothing. Fear what can cast both soul and body into hell” (Luke 12:4–5). Sin is an infinitely more dangerous disease than AIDS. And if the world is willing to spend millions and millions of dollars to wake this country up to its danger of AIDS, how much more should we, who know the cure, spend whatever it costs to wake this city up to the danger of sin!

C.S. Lewis’ Burden as a Literary Scholar

C. S. Lewis, the brilliant English scholar and Christian writer, died the same day President John Kennedy did. This November will be the 25th anniversary of his death. Even today his books on the Christian faith are being reprinted by the thousands. One of the reasons I think God so greatly blessed the ministry of C. S. Lewis, and still blesses it, is that Lewis never hand an elitist, artsy love for fine literature or fine music or fine culture in any form, though he himself was a great artist. In his life everything is subordinate to the salvation of lost sinners.

I find what he says a tremendous inspiration to keep the perishing before our eyes as we do our work and pray how God would use us to wake them up. Listen to Lewis for the sake of your own ministry.

It is hardly possible for [us] to think too often or too deeply about [the glory] of our neighbor . . . It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. (The Weight of Glory, pp. 14f.)

So he says of his own scholarly discipline,

The Christian will take literature a little less seriously than the cultured Pagan . . . The Christian knows from the outset that the salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world. (Christian Reflections, p. 10)

This tips us off to what C. S. Lewis’ life was really devoted to. In 1952 an American liberal theologian criticized Lewis for using simple analogies to try to shed some light on the Trinity. Lewis’ response was passionate and shows where his heart really was in all his work.

Most of my books are evangelistic, addressed to [those outside]. I was writing to the people not to the clergy. Dr. Pittinger would be a more helpful critic if he advised a cure as well as asserting many diseases. How does he himself do such work? What methods, and with what success, does he employ when he is trying to convert the great mass of storekeepers, lawyers, realtors, morticians, policeman and artisans who surround him in his own city? (God in the Dock, pp. 181–183)

That was Lewis’ burden as a literary scholar. I hope it is your burden whatever your profession. You have never talked to a mere mortal. They will all last forever. And unless they repent, they will perish.

4. “Repent”

Luke gives us three illustrations of repentance in the face of judgment.

Luke 10:13–15

Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades.

Luke 11:32

The men of Nineveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

Jonah 3:5, 7–9:

The people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them . . . The king made proclamation . . . “Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence which is in his hands.”

Luke 16:29–31

After his death the unrepentant rich man is in torment. He asks Abraham to send someone to warn his brothers, so they don’t perish in this place of torment. But . . .

Abraham said, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” And he said, “No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” He said to him, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.”

I conclude that repentance involves believing God (Jonah 3:5) rather than the Satan’s claim that more joy can be found in sin than in obedience. It is a “being persuaded” about the danger of impenitence (Luke 16:31) and the way of escape through repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Luke 24:47). It involves grief over past sins and present sinful tendencies. This is the significance of the sackcloth and ashes (Luke 10:13; Jonah 3:5). And it involves turning from evil ways (Jonah 3:8).

So faith and repentance are not properly two separate things. The turning of repentance is a turning from trusting in other things to a trusting in God. And with a new trust in God as counselor and protector and provider there is also a turning to a new life of joyful obedience.

© Desiring God

Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God

Posted by Dan C. on

In Chapter IV of his 1961 book, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God , J. I. Packer makes the following bold statement:

The sovereignty of God in grace gives us our only hope of success in evangelism.

He doesn’t just tell us that because God sovereignly administers grace we have ‘some’ hope of success in our evangelistic efforts, he boldly asserts that “The sovereignty of God in grace is our ‘only’ hope of success in evangelism.”  (emphasis mine). Now that might sound a bit peculiar to some of you, if not downright insulting, considering the amount of effort you devote to the task of evangelism!

Dear reader, I ask you to hear him out. What follows is Packer’s explanation of his assertion.

Some fear that belief in the sovereign grace of God leads to the conclusion that evangelism is pointless, since God will save His elect anyway, whether they hear the gospel or not. This, as we have seen, is a false conclusion based on a false assumption. But now we must go further, and point out that the truth is just the opposite. So far from making evangelism pointless, the sovereignty of God in grace is the one thing that prevents evangelism from being pointless. For it creates the possibility—indeed, the certainty—that evangelism will be fruitful. Apart from it, there is not even a possibility of evangelism being fruitful. Were it not for the sovereign grace of God, evangelism would be the most futile and useless enterprise that the world has ever seen, and there would be no more complete waste of time under the sun than to preach the Christian gospel.

Why is this? Because of the spiritual inability of man in sin. Let Paul, the greatest of all evangelists, explain this to us.

Fallen man, says Paul, has a blinded mind, and so is unable to grasp spiritual truth. ‘The natural (unspiritual, unregenerate) man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.’[1Cor 2:14] Again, he has a perverse and ungodly nature. ‘The carnal mind (the mind of the unregenerate man) is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.’ The consequence? ‘So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.’[Rom 8:7 f.] In both these passages Paul makes two distinct statements about fallen man in relation to God’s truth, and the progression of thought is parallel in both cases. First Paul asserts unregenerate man’s failure, as a matter of fact. He ‘receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God’; he ‘is not subject to the law of God’. But then Paul goes on to interpret his first statement by a second, to the effect that this failure is a necessity of nature, some- thing certain and inevitable and universal and unalterable, just because it is not in man to do other- wise than fail in this way. ‘Neither can he know them.’ ‘Neither indeed can be.’ Man in Adam has not got it in him to apprehend spiritual realities, or to obey God’s law from his heart. Enmity against God, leading to defection from God, is the law of his nature. It is, so to speak, instinctive to him to suppress and evade and deny God’s truth, and to shrug off God’s authority and to flout God’s law—yes, and when he hears the gospel to disbelieve and disobey that too. This is the sort of person that he is. He is, says Paul, ‘dead in trespasses and sins[Eph 2:1]—wholly incapacitated for any positive reaction to God’s Word, deaf to God’s speech, blind to God’s revelation, impervious to God’s inducements. If you talk to a corpse, there is no response; the man is dead. When God’s Word is spoken to sinners, there is equally no response; they are ‘dead in trespasses and sins’.

Nor is this all. Paul also tells us that Satan (whose power and ill will he never underestimates) is constantly active to keep sinners in their natural state. Satan ‘now worketh in the children of disobedience[Eph 2:2] to ensure that they do not obey God’s law. And ‘the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ . . . should shine unto them.’[2Cor 4:4] So that there are two obstacles in the way of successful evangelism: the first, man’s natural and irresistible impulse to oppose God, and the second, Satan’s assiduity in shepherding man in the ways of unbelief and disobedience.

What does this mean for evangelism? It means, quite simply, that evangelism, described as we have described it, cannot possibly succeed. However clear and cogent we may be in presenting the gospel, we have no hope of convincing or converting anyone. Can you or I by our earnest talking break the power of Satan over a man’s life? No. Can you or I give life to the spiritually dead? No. Can we hope to convince sinners of the truth of the gospel by patient explanation? No. Can we hope to move men to obey the gospel by any words of entreaty that we may utter? No. Our approach to evangelism is not realistic till we have faced this shattering fact, and let it make its proper impact on us. When a schoolmaster is trying to teach children arithmetic, or grammar, and finds them slow to learn, he assures himself that the penny must drop sooner or later, and so encourages himself to keep on trying. We can most of us muster great reserves of patience if we think that there is some prospect of ultimate success in what we are attempting. But in the case of evangelism there is no such prospect. Regarded as a human enterprise, evangelism is a hopeless task. It cannot in principle produce the desired effect. We can preach, and preach clearly and fluently and attractively; we can talk to individuals in the most pointed and challenging way; we can organize special services, and distribute tracts, and put up posters, and flood the country with publicity—and there is not the slightest prospect that all this outlay of effort will bring a single soul home to God. Unless there is some other factor in the situation, over and above our own endeavours, all evangelistic action is foredoomed to failure. This is the fact, the brute, rock-bottom fact, that we have to face.

That other factor in the situation is the divine sovereignty of the creator and ruler of the universe, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.” (Rom 11:36)

‘

Ode to Evolution

Posted by Dan C. on

Rearranged pond scum, that is what we are;

Accidental tourists, wandering near and far.

No matter how we think, no matter what we do,

We can’t be held responsible, ‘cause we just came from goo!

So when I burn your house down, or maybe shoot you dead,

My neurons are to blame; I can’t help what’s in my head!

Open up the prison doors, and turn the inmates loose,

No one’s really right or wrong in Darwin’s universe.

You do what’s right for you; I’ll do what’s right for me,

We can tiptoe through the tulips, or go on a killing spree.

When the day is over, and when this life is done,

All that really matters is that everyone had fun!

If you think this ditty silly, or somehow I’ve gone dense,

If we’re really only pond scum, good and evil don’t make sense!

       – Anonymous

Expounding 1 John 1:8 John Gill (1697–1771)

Posted by Dan C. on

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1Jn 1:8)


Notwithstanding believers are cleansed from their sins by the blood of Christ, yet they are not without sin; no man is without sin.

This is not only true of all men, as they come into the world, being conceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity, and of all that are in a state of unregeneracy, and of God’s elect, while in such a state, but even of all regenerated and sanctified persons in this life; as appears by the ingenuous confessions of sin made by the saints in all ages;

by their complaints concerning it,

and groans under it;

by the continual war in them between flesh and spirit;

and by their prayers for the discoveries of pardoning grace,

and for the fresh application of Christ’s blood for cleansing;

by their remissness in the discharge of duty,

and by their frequent slips and falls, and often backslidings:

Though their sins are all pardoned, and they are justified from all things by the righteousness of Christ, yet they are not without sin. Though they are freed from the guilt of sin, and are under no obligation to punishment on account of it, yet not from the being of it.

Their sins were indeed transferred from them to Christ,

and he has bore them,

and took them and put them away,

and they are redeemed from them,

and are acquitted,

discharged,

and pardoned,

so that sin is not imputed to them,

and God sees no iniquity in them in the article of justification;

and also, their iniquities are caused to pass from them, as to the guilt of them, and are taken out of their sight,

and they have no more conscience of them, having their hearts sprinkled and purged by the blood of Jesus,

and are clear of all condemnation,

the curse of the law,

the wrath of God,

or the second death, by reason of them;

Yet pardon of sin, and justification from it, though they take away the guilt of sin, and free from obligation to punishment, yet they do not take out the being of sin, or cause it to cease to act, or do not make sins cease to be sins, or change the nature of actions, of sinful ones, to make them harmless, innocent, or indifferent.

The sins of believers are equally sins with other persons, are of the same kind and nature, and equally transgressions of the law, and many of them are attended with more aggravating circumstances, and are taken notice of by God, and resented by him, and for which he chastises his people in love.

Now though a believer may say that he has not this or that particular sin, or is not guilty of this or that sin, for he has the seeds of all sin in him, yet he cannot say he has no sin; and though he may truly say he shall have no sin, for in the other state the being and principle of sin will be removed, and the saints will be perfectly holy in themselves, yet he cannot, in this present life, say that he is without it. If any of us who profess to be cleansed from sin by the blood of Christ should affirm this, we deceive ourselves. Such persons must be ignorant of themselves, and put a cheat upon themselves, thinking themselves to be something when they are nothing; flattering themselves what pure and holy creatures they are, when there is a fountain of sin and wickedness in them. These are self-deceptions, sad delusions, and gross impositions upon themselves.

If there was a real work of God upon their souls, they would know and discern

the plague of their own hearts,

the impurity of their nature,

and the imperfection of their obedience.

Nor is the word of truth in them, for if that had an entrance into them, and worked effectually in them, they would in the light of it discover much sin and iniquity in them; and indeed there is no principle of truth, no veracity in them; there is no sincerity nor ingenuity in them; they do not speak honestly and uprightly, but contrary to the dictates of their own conscience.

________________________________

John Gill (23 November 1697 – 14 October 1771) was an English Baptist pastor, biblical scholar, and theologian.  Born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, he attended Kettering Grammar School where he mastered the Latin classics and learned Greek by age 11. He continued self-study in everything from logic to Hebrew, his love for the latter remaining throughout his life.

His first pastoral work was as an intern assisting John Davis at Higham Ferrers in 1718 at age 21. He became pastor at the Strict Baptist church at Goat Yard Chapel, Horsleydown, Southwark in 1719. His pastorate lasted 51 years. In 1757 his congregation needed larger premises and moved to a Carter Lane, St. Olave’s Street, Southwark. This Baptist church was once pastored by Benjamin Keach and would later become the New Park Street Chapel and then the Metropolitan Tabernacle pastored by Charles Spurgeon.

The Virtue of the Hour

Posted by Dan C. on

“The time has come for Christians to stir: The house is being robbed, its very walls are being digged down, but the good people who are in the bed are too fond of the warmth, and too much afraid of getting broken heads, to go downstairs and meet the burglars …Inspiration and speculation cannot long abide in peace. Compromise there can be none. We cannot hold the inspiration of the Word, and yet reject it; we cannot believe in the atonement and deny it; we cannot talk of the doctrine of the fall and yet talk of the evolution of spiritual life from human nature … One way or another we must go. Decision is the virtue of the hour.” – Charles Haddon Spurgeon