What was/is the purpose of Israel?

The purpose of Israel in the Old Testament:

A. to bring the Messiah into the world
B. to glorify God
C. to bring the nations to God
D. all of the above
E. None of the above

judgement in James

I am wondering if any of you readers could share your thoughts with me about two passages in James. Is the judgement spoken of in 2:12-13 and 3:1...

- the final judgement (ie Matthew 25)
- two seperate judgements
- the beleivers judgement (ie I Cor
- some other interpretation I havent thought of?

Would appreciate your thoughts!

Theological Reflections #2 - Why I Like Systematic Theology and Why I Think it is Essential

I guess there are people who still read this and I have been blessed by your feedback, both in the comments section here and on facebook.

It's been a while since I wrote on this subject so I have linked to the first post here

My last post was a little hard on Systematic theology and I gave the reasons why. I ended that post promising, "Next up: What I like about systematic theology and why I think it is essential". I wonder if everybody caught that.

While I must admit studying systematic theology is at times a struggle for me, I do think it is important, perhaps essential.

Here's what I'm thinking:

The Bible talks a lot about "Doctrine". I know doctrine is not a word we talk about much anymore, but it's right there in the Bible numerous times. Most germane to our discussion are Paul's exhortations to Timothy to :
- nourish himself on the "sound doctrine which you have been following" (1 Ti 4:6)
- protect the honor of the doctrines the apostles teach (I Tim 6:1)
- defend against those who go against the doctrines of Jesus (I Tim 6:3)
And to Titus:
- stand for sound Doctrine (1:9; 2:1)
- Good deeds and good doctrine are inseperable (2:7; 2:10)

It seems clear that just as Jesus and the apostles would not have wanted someone to take one aspect of their doctrine or teaching and isolate and fixate on it - effectively ignoring the rest of their teaching - so we should not attempt to do the same with the collective doctrines of Divine Revelation as recorded in the Bible. A systematic understanding of the various teachings of God in Scripture is an essential element of faithfully understanding and obeying those teachings. If you cannot see how the micro theme (assuming you have indeed actually discovered/interpreted the passage/verse/phrase correctly) of an isolated passage relates to and harmonizes with the Meta themes of the whole of Scripture...tread slowly and carefully. Much if not all false teaching (intentional or, more often, not) has come from this dangerous position.

I leave you with the following thought from Spurgeon:

“Systematic theology is to the Bible what science is to nature. To suppose that all the other works of God are orderly and systematic, and the greater the work the more perfect the system; and that the greatest of all His works, in which all His perfections are transcendently displayed, should have no plan or system, is altogether absurd. If faith in the Scriptures is to be positive, if consistent with itself, if operative, if abiding, it must have a fixed and well-defined creed. No one can say that the Bible is his creed, unless he can express it in words of his own.” - Spurgeon, The Forgotten Spurgeon Ian Murray

Prosperity Videos

Here are two videos I came across recently speaking to the issue of the prosperity "gospel". This false gospel is something that is very prevalent especially in areas of poverty, including the neighborhood I live and work in.

The first video is John Piper explaining some of the many reasons he "abominates" this perversion of the Truth.



The second is a short documentary about how the teaching has taken deep roots in Africa.

The Prosperity Gospel from The Global Conversation on Vimeo.

Gospel thoughts

Alright so I'm back from Europe, almost done with the Navy application process and crawling to catch up with ministry here in Los Angeles. I really want to get back soon to our journey through systematic theology, but that will have to wait for now. In the meantime chew on this and let me know your thoughts.

The Gospel is composed of objective propositional truth that must be believed to be effective. But since the ultimate truth is a living Being (John 14:6) the Gospel is not only propositional but experiential and relational. This is not some emotional high or vision from heaven (necessarily), but there is an aspect of the Gospel that affects not only what we intellectually assent to but also emotionally and relationally commit to. True belief involves not only the intellect, but the body, soul, and heart of a person (Matt 22:37). True knowledge and understanding is not just mental but experiential and practical. To receive the Gospel is to receive a new belief system and worldview. But it is more than that. It is to receive a new life. A new way of thinking and a new way of living. Mere behavioral change is not the Gospel. But a salvation that is not being worked out (not worked for) is no salvation at all (James 2:14-26, Phil 2:12-13).

your friend
jrf

Evangelistic Methodology Gum

Chew on this question posed by Will Metzger in his book, Tell the Truth
"Instead sending His Son, why didn't God just send a tract?"

Theological Reflections - why I don't like systematic theology

Well a whole summer has passed since I last posted, so I'm not sure if anyone reads this anymore. If you are looking for up to date information and important discussions on topics like "what's on John's mind right now" (that's a joke) I regularly post low-thought updates on my facebook page. But I am am going to make a quasi-valiant effort to get back to posting on this site.

I am attempting to post a series of theological reflections. I have no idea how long this series will last. The subject matter (God) is infinite and therefore the limiting factors will be not the lack of things to ponder but my ability or lack thereof to ponder them coupled with my lack of discipline.

I ask you to please challenge me and interact with what I post as much as possible. Hopefully this will be a fruitful journey for us all.

The idea for this series comes from my realization that I feel like systematic theology is one of the weakest areas of my life. There are probably many reasons for this but here are a few I could think of:

1. All systematic theologies have an inherent bias in them. The Bible is not a systematic theology book. Systematic theology requires the filter of a human mind and therefore can and most likely will have fallibilities in them. Wading through the muck of the author's presuppositions can often be daunting.

2. There is a strong temptation when studying theology to make it only academic. Every fiber of my being loathes studying just for studying's sake (although I too often fall into that trap). For that reason I have tended to deemphasize systematic theology. I remember being frustrated in seminary when the practical things I was experiencing in inner city ministry didn't seem to find a place in the systematic theology syllabus we were being taught. Part of that I believe was the personal bias' and perspectives of the professors who were not concerned/exposed to the issues of the inner city. Most of it was my failure to convert orthodoxy into orthopraxy.

3. I love expository preaching/studying. I have strong convictions that the expository method is the best and most faithful way to understand and explain the Word of God. Systematic theology done bad has all of the pitfalls of a bad topical sermon, namely taking verses out of context and eisegesis.

4. The Bible is not a systematic theology textbook, and I really like the Bible.

5. Systematic thinking is very much a western concept. Does that make it necessary for understanding and living out the truth of Scripture?

6. Good systematic theology books are huge and I am a lazy, slow reader.

7. I prefer reading narratives to didactic writing.


Well that's it for now
Next up: What I like about systematic theology and why I think it is essential

Shalom in Jesus
jrf

Whosit or Whatsit?

Here's a few questions for you:

1. Is God three Persons in one Being (Three Who's in a What)
or
Is God three Persons in one Person (Three Who's in a Who)

2. Is this important?


Whattya think and why?

Dear sin, you are hideous

I was struck while reading Perelandra (Book 2 in C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy) at the ugliness of sin and convicted by my lack of deep hatred for it. In the book the main character, Dr. Ransom, has been taken to a planet that is just being created. This new planet has an equivalent Adam and Eve and sin has not yet infected this new creation. Everything is new, pure, beautiful, peaceful, perfect, and full of life. Ransom spends a few days on this planet, basking in the beauty of God's unspoiled work, until evil is introduced. When Ransom stumbles across the first effects of this evil he is stunned by something that we would not think twice about here on sin-stained earth. But this decay in a world of pure life brought out the reality of the stark contrast between death and life. Here is how Lewis communicates it.

At first he (Dr. Ransom) thought it was a creature of more fantastic shape than he had yet seen on Perelandra. Its shape and was not only fantastic but hideous. Then he dropped on one knee to examine it. Finally he touched it, with reluctance. A moment later he drew back his hands like a man who had touched a snake.
It was a damaged animal. It was, or had been, one of the brightly coloured frogs. But some accident had happened to it. The whole back had been ripped open in a sort of V-shaped gash, the point of the V being a little behind the head. Something had torn a widening wound backward -- as we do in opening an envelope -- along the trunk and pulled it out so far behind the animal that the hoppers or hind legs had been almost torn off with it. They were so damaged that the frog could not leap. On earth it would have been merely a nasty sight, but up to this moment Ransom had as yet seen nothing dead or spoiled in Perelandra, and it was like a blow in the face. It was like the first spasm of well-remembered pain warning a man who had thought he was cured that his family have deceived him and he is dying after all. It was like the first lie from the mouth of a friend on whose truth one was willing to stake a thousand pounds. It was irrevocable. The milk-warm wind blowing over the golden sea, the blues and silvers and greens of the floating garden, the sky itself -- all these had become, in one instant, merely the illuminated margin of a book whose text was the struggling little horror at his feet, and he himself, in that same instant, had passed into a state of emotion which he could neither control nor understand. He told himself that a creature of that kind probably had very little sensation. But it did not much mend matters. It was not merely pity for pain that had suddenly changed the rhythm of his heart-beats. The thing was an intolerable obscenity which afficted him with shame. It would have been better, or so he thought at that moment, for the whole universe never to have existed than for this one thing to have happened. (108-109)


I want to have this kind of repulsion to sin and its effects. I want to see the ugliness of Satan as exposed in the piercing and truthful rays of God's glory. I want to curse the father of lies and be sickened at the horribleness of sin every time I drive by roadkill or am selfish or watch a dear friend die of cancer or see a people group systematically oppressed. I want to praise God that even His sin perverted-creation can still have a shadow of beauty that goes beyond any synthetic imitation we could make. I want to see and feel sin and its effects from God's perspective, not my own desensitized, complacent position. And I can because Christ, through His being twisted, tortured, torn and terminated has faced sin and it's rotten Father and defeated them for and throughout eternity.

12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— 13 for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. (Ro 5:12-19)

But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.
(Heb 9:26)

by His grace
for His glory
jrf

please standby....

I pray that all of you had a great Christmas. While you may have expected me to post more now that I am out of school, think again. I am taking time off to let the scabs on my brain heal and quite frankly I am being lazy. But don't worry, I'm working up to a few posts that hopefully will have some substantial depth to them as well as updating you about the ministry. But for the meantime here is a Tozer quote to marinate in.

"We cannot think rightly of God until we begin to think of Him as always being there, and there first. Joshua had this to learn. He had been so long the servant of God's servant Moses, and had with such assurance received God's word at his mouth, that Moses and the God of Moses had become blended in his thinking, so blended that he could hardly separate the two thoughts; by association they always appeared together in his mind. Now Moses is dead, and lest the young Joshua be struck down with despair God spoke to assure him, "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee" (Joshua 1:5; 3:7). Nothing had changed and nothing had been lost. Nothing of God dies when a man of God dies."

the Divine Oops?

Alright,

now that I know that at least four people (my 2 year old second cousin included) read this blog I have a renewed sense of worth and purpose. No, really thank you for your kind and encouraging comments.
So now that i know you all can use the comments section, let's get a discussion going. Below is a quote from Bruce Ware's book entitled God's Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism. Open Theism is a model of thinking about God being proposed by some in the "evangelical" world of Christianity. It basically states that true love and relationship can only happen between two equally vunerable persons. Therefore if God truly loves us and we are to truly love Him, He would have to share our limitations as far as not knowing the future. If He predetermined the future, or even knew the future, He would have an unfair advantage over us and therefore the relationship would not be genuine. or something like that. So, read the quote below and let's talk about what the implications are for and against believing in a God that knows the future. Let's discuss freely but as always, the Word of God will be the final authority.


"I have in mind particularly the suggestion that God reassessed his decision to bring a flood upon the whole world, sensing the pain from that destruction to have been greater than the pain from the sin itself. I see no other way to take this than as a suggestion that God in hindsight judged that he had made an enormous mistake. Granted, Sanders makes clear he believes that God was righteous in this judgment. Fine, but was he wise? Consider the magnitude of this mistake, if in fact God thought it so to be. The whole world, save a few people and animals, was deliberately killed by God in this action. Issues in human affairs could hardly get weightier than this. to think that God looked back and thought to himself, This was too severe and I am not entirely sure I should have done it; in fact, I'll never do it again, is nothing short of staggering! What confidence can we have in a God who must second guess his own actions? What does this tell us about the wisdom of God's own plans? If God is not sure that what he does is best, can we be sure that he really knows what he is doing? The simple fact is that a God who can only speculate regarding what much of the future holds, at times second-guesses his own plans, can get things wrong, can falsely anticipate what may happen next, and may even repent of his own past conduct is a God unworthy of devotion, trust, and praise. What open theists have "gained" by their insistence on God as a risk-taker has been won at the expense of God's full wisdom, knowledge, trustworthiness, majesty, sovereignty, and glory; and it leads inevitably to doubt, worry, and fear regarding the fulfillment of God's plans. This surely is a case of trading in the family inheritance for plans to build a new home on attractively advertised but worthless swampland." (Ware, 158-9)

Time for some quotes!

As I was preparing for a meeting today I ran across some good quotes concerning sanctification and thought I would pass them along.

This life, therefore,
is not righteousness but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest by exercise.
We are not yet what we shall be,
but we are growing toward it;
the process is not yet finished but it is going on.
This is not the end but it is the road;
all does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.
- Martin Luther

Holiness is not the way to Christ.
Christ is the way to holiness.
- Adrian Rogers

Becoming a Christian is not making a new start in life;
it is receiving a new life to start with.
- Thomas Adams

Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned.
Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin.
Grace is power, not just pardon.
- John Piper

Don't just sit there by yourself or off to one side and hang your head, and shake it and gnaw your knuckles and worry and look for a way out, nothing on your mind except how bad you feel, how you hurt, what a poor guy you are. Get up, you lazy scamp! Down on your knees! Up with your hands and eyes toward heaven!
- Martin Luther

If you still have a hankering for some good quotes, check this one out at my buddies blog.

Is God still Glorified if People Don't Come?

For a more lucid and helpful discussion of a similar issue as the topic of my previous post check out this recent post by my seminary buddy and fellow youth pastor HERE.

Repent! (part 1)

A reoccuring theme in my life over the past month or so has been repentance. I have taught on it, read about it in books, encountered it in my devotionals, and been confronted with the need for it in my own life. While I do not claim to be an expert on the subject either intellectually or experientially, I would like to post some thoughts and studies which may serve no greater purpose than helping me to synthesize my understanding of repentance but I pray that they may also be of some help and encouragement to you as well.

What is Repentance?
Old Testament
There are two primary words used for repentance in the Old Testament. The First word, naham, literally means “to pant” or “to sigh”. This word is concerned with expressing emotion. It is largely used to describe God’s response to man’s sin. In this usage, the word can accompany either God’s righteous judgment or His gracious mercy (Gen 6:6; Jonah 3:10). It is only when this word is applied to humans does it take on a sense of personal guilt and culpability. This difference is clearly delineated in the Scriptures (1 Sam 15:29; Job 42:6; Jer 8:6).
The second word used for repentance in the Old Testament is the term shubh. Translated literally it means “to turn” or “to Return”. The word is the main term used by the prophets when imploring the people of Israel to turn from their wickedness. This repentance demands a radical transformation of lifestyle which includes both an abandonment of sin and pursuit of righteousness (Deut 4:30; Neh 1:9; Ps 7:12; Jer 3:14).

New Testament

epistrepho
This word means plainly “to turn about, round, or towards.” Although it has other uses, it often is used to signify a conversion experience or turning from sin. Many of the conversion experiences of the Gentiles recorded in Acts are described using this word. It implies both a turning from sin and a turning to God (Acts 9:35; 11:21; 26:20; 1 Thess 1:9). This word focuses more on the noticeable and measurable action of change that is involved in repentance and makes no mention of grief or self-punishment as a part of the process.
metanoia (matt 3:8, 11)
This verb literally means “to perceive or change afterwards.” It is made up of the words meta (which means “after”)and noew (which means to “perceive” and implies change). It suggests a change of mind and purpose, as the result of knowledge. The related noun metanoia, is used to describe true repentance and indicates a change of life in which sin is forsaken.
John the Baptist, Jesus and the apostles all used the word metanoew when exhorting their listeners to repent (Matt 3:2; Mark 1:15; Acts 2:38). When used in the New Testament the word is always related with a spiritual transformation. It is coupled with the act of turning towards faith in Christ in Acts 2:38. Again in Acts 3:19 the word is used to exhort unbelievers to “return, that your sins may be wiped away”. Here we see repentance being referred to as the means by sins we are cleansed from our sins. In addition, this word is often associated and concerned with the intentions of the heart (Acts 8:22). Repentance in not entirely an inward experience however. It was used in conjunction with baptism by John the Baptist as an outward symbol of the inward change that repentance brings (Mark 1:4; Luke 3:3; Acts 13:24; 19:4). Repentance is also presented as the only means of avoiding the penalties of sin (Luke 13:3). Furthermore, true repentance is evidenced in a person by the “fruit” that can be seen in their life (Matthew 3:8). Interestingly, This verb is used in the book of Revelation a total of twelve times. Eight of those uses are found in the letters to the seven churches of Asia.
metamelomai (matt. 4:17)
This verb is translated as “to regret or to repent.” It is generally understood that this verb connotes a more emotional defined response to sin. It focuses more on the remorse over sin and as opposed to the turning from sin. The word is also used to express regret, as is the case with Judas Iscariot (Matt 27:3).

Promises to the repentant
When used in the context of personal or corporate turning from sin, Scripture tells us that God has promised to respond with compassion and not only pardon us from the guilt and punishment of our wickedness, but give us life (II Chr 7:14; Is 55:7; Eze 18:21). It is clear from such passages as Psalm 51:17 and Joel 2:12-14 that God is primarily concerned with the individuals heart and will not respond to mere lip service.

In part 2 we will explore how repentance, although demanded of humanity, is possible only by the empowering grace of God.

by His grace
for His glory
jrf