Preaching: Restoration in Christ

God graciously restores sinners to Himself through Jesus Christ.

            Some theologians draw the plan of salvation in three broad strokes: Creation, Fall, and Restoration (or Redemption). If we think of salvation as simply “gettin’ saved,” we can miss out on a lot of the work of Christ as He restores the image of God in His people. When Adam sinned, the image of God in him was terribly marred. Moreover, all Adam’s children are born with the same “birth defect.” By “ordinary generation” we are born not only with a bad record (guilt), but also with a bad heart (depravity), with sins continually flowing from it. God’s saving work in Christ not only answers to our guilt, but also to the issue of our sin-sick heart. God not only restores us to a right relationship with Himself, but also restores in us the family likeness – His love and holiness. Restoration begins with the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit and continues with His work of sanctification. This wonderful process will continue to advance until the grace that began it is swallowed up by the glory that completes it.

            This truth of restoration has momentous application when it comes to Bible interpretation and preaching. If God’s work in the believer is that of restoration, then the aim of Bible interpretation and proclamation should be the same. Mere information, theological disquisitions, or sentimental musings fall far short of the target. Rehearsing the same doctrines and pet applications ad infinitum does the hungry sheep no good. Neither does it help the as-of-yet fully unrestored sheep. As Bryan Chapell explains in his book Christ-Centered Preaching, the Scriptures are given to us to restore us from our fallen condition. They address those areas that are still unrenewed in us and show us the restoration in Christ that He purchased for us in His redeeming death. While it can be pleasant to sort out theological knots, or to get a “warm fuzzy” from Scripture, the sheep need to have their issues diagnosed and exposed, and their diseases treated.

            Let us approach the Word of God to see Christ and His saving work. Anything short of this is a waste of time. Among other things, this will mean detailed exposition of those “practical” parts of Scripture that tell us in no uncertain terms how we are to live – how we are to express our love God and to others. There are no clearer diagnostic tests than the plain statements of exhortation applied to every heart – our own first of all.

            God help us be good “medics” on the battlefield! 

Real Christianity: God is Light (1 John 1:5)

The Bible is a theocentric (God-centered) book, because God is the main Character in it. Christianity, therefore, is a theocentric religion and fellowship with God is theocentric, too, for the same reason – it is all about God. Whether men realize it or not the universe and all of life is theocentric. Therefore, our fellowship with God depends on who and what God is, not on what we are. In fact, as we shall see, what we are is a hindrance to fellowship with God.

John’s message that he declares to us simple folk who hold to the apostolic teaching of the New Testament is that “God is Light, and darkness is not in Him at all.” (1 John 1:5). John defines the basis of fellowship with God in terms of light and darkness. Under the figure of light John presents to us the absolute and undiluted holiness of God. God is holy, righteous and true. Therefore, God Himself is the standard by which we enjoy fellowship with Him. God expressed this to Abraham when He said, “Walk in My presence and be complete in your conformity to Me” (Gen.17:1). In order to walk acceptably in God’s presence one must conform to Him and to His will. This only makes sense. God is our Creator and Provider. He has every right to tell us how to live. He told Adam and Eve, and He tells everyone else. God has not surrendered His right to sovereign mastery of men.

If I am to walk in fellowship with God I must conform to His light and reflect it back to Him as well as to those around me. Obviously this will mean dramatic change in me, in my thoughts and in my actions. But cheer up. There is Light on my path to lead the way and to make the changes I need.

More to come, with God’s help…

The Bible: What it’s all about (4)

God graciously saves sinners through Jesus Christ.

Because the Scriptures are Christocentric in their focus, they are therefore redemptive in their focus. They are about God SAVING sinners. In fact, the Bible is the revelation of this saving work as God developed it and worked it out through history. Scripture unfolds what one man called the “Drama of Redemption.” This is the grand theme of all of Scripture. Given that man is fallen and not able to rescue himself from the wrath of God, it is up to God to save him, if he is to be saved. That is what the Bible is all about. Any other story is useless to fallen man. Any story about morality or human performance does nothing for someone who is spiritually dead and, therefore, totally dependent on the good will of God to make him right with God.

The believer is also totally dependent on the grace of God. If we are to live out the Christian life we need God to be continually “at work in (us) both for the willing and the doing of what pleases Him.” Only then can we “work out (our) own salvation” in the form of a fruitful and God-glorifying life (Phil.2:12-13). Therefore, when we read Scripture, we need to look for God’s saving work, either as explained in teaching portions, or as demonstrated in the stories of God’s dealings with individuals. Focusing on the individuals will keep us from seeing the grander work of God. Remember, the Bible is about God and His dealings with men, not about men and their dealings with God. The Gospels, for example, are not about the disciples, the Pharisees, or those who were spoken to by Christ. THE GOSPELS ARE ABOUT CHRIST! To speak of anyone else as the main character of a passage is to ignore the most important Person in the story. What kind of blessing can we expect from ignoring Christ? A man-centered “blessing,” that’s what kind. Any other story is useless to fallen man, believer or unbeliever. Brethren, we have such little time to read and think about God’s Word as it is.  Let’s not waste it.

More to come, God willing…

The Bible: What it’s all about (3)

God graciously saves sinners through Jesus Christ.

Graciously. God makes known to us early in Scripture (Gen.3) that the work of salvation is a work of sovereign grace. He does it because He wants to. He is not bound by anything in man, by any sense of obligation to man, or by any sense of need on His won part. He saves guilty, sinful, rebellious man of His own free will (and good will).

            Moreover, the word graciously signifies that God saves man without any help from man or any merit in man. The Bible is not the story of how men worked their way into God’s favor, or how they helped God out or earned His blessing by obeying Him. That is true both of unbeliever and believer. We are what we are by the grace of God (1 Cor.15:10). Even in those who “labor abundantly” for the Lord, what they do is thanks to the grace of God working abundantly in them. No one can boast of his accomplishments, only of God’s accomplishments in and through him.

            Grace means that God comes to a fallen, guilty, rebellious friend of Satan and reverses all the disastrous effects of sin in him. When Adam and Eve sinned, they rejected God’s counsel and submitted to Satan’s. They became buddies with that Arch Deceiver and Rebel against God. However, God said in Genesis 3 that He would reverse Adam and Eve’s friendship with Satan and put enmity in its place. In other words, their hearts would be changed to hate Satan and the sin they had chosen; and once again love God and His will. That is grace!

            This last truth is most important for our understanding of Scripture. When we read of someone doing God’s will or pleasing Him we must understand that it is God Himself who made the difference. God is the One who gave them heart-changing grace and enabled them to obey Him. Such people are not in Scripture because they earned a place in God’s story, but because God dug them out of the miry clay, gave them a new heart, and worked in them to obey Him. “It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil.2:13). Such people are not examples of what man can do, but examples of what God’s grace can do in us, too.

Remember, it is God who makes the difference.

More to come, with God’s help…

Real Christianity: By the Book (1 John 1:4)

Today people are enamored with personal experiences. The New Age movement is all about experiencing super-human spirit forces that can give meaning to life. The basic hedonist is all about experiencing pleasure and fulfillment from the joys offered by the creation. The bias of the “Me” generation (which is really every person still dead in transgressions and sins) is like a black hole that pulls everything in life into the vortex of self. But this self-centered perspective on life is not peculiar to unbelievers. It can infect Christians, too. We can be so involved with the “me-my-and-mine” in this world that our time, energies and resources are exhausted by “just living.” Yet, at the end of the day we have to confess that what we have been occupied with isn’t really “living” at all, but only maintaining our existence. For the Christian, life is not defined by personal experiences, but by fellowship with God. Personal experiences are just that, personal, and therefore different for everyone. Fellowship with God is the constant of Christianity – basically the same for every child of God.

If we are to avoid that selfish pre-occupation with the things of the present life, one thing we will have to do is make sure we have “God” time whether we have our own personal “me” time or not. In other words, the face of God comes before Facebook.

John says, “we are writing these things (about Christ and about fellowship with God) to you so that your joy may be completely filled up.” In verse 3 John says his purpose in declaring these things to us was our having fellowship with God. However, John has not only “declared” these things to us, he has written them down as well. In fact, the testimony of John and the other apostles was very carefully written down in the Gospels and Epistles. These books were written, Jesus said, “for those who will believe in Me through their word” (Jn.17:20), that is, in the New Testament. The apostolic testimony declares, explains and applies the Person and work of Christ in redeeming us. God gave us that revelation so that we might have fellowship with Him – that we might know Him through Christ, be accepted by Him, love Him, trust Him, follow Him and enjoy Him.

At the end of the day, fellowship with God is an experience, one that will last forever. But it is entered into and enjoyed only as we read, study, meditate on, believe and follow His revealed Word in the Bible. The measure of your joyful fellowship with God’s Book will be the measure of your joyful fellowship with God.

More to come, God willing…

Preaching: Text or Theology?

If the Bible is not a theology Book (see previous post), then what is it? The Bible is God preaching. It is not just information; it is proclamation. The aim is to address sinners about what God has done in Christ, and to call them to “repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). Whether Old Testament or New, we read about God’s salvation through Christ. Therefore the grand theme that is controlling all the revelation in the Bible is “God’s gracious salvation of sinners through Christ.” That could really be the subtitle on the title page of your Bible. It is the controlling factor for all that the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of Scripture to include in their texts.

All of the Bible is what can be called “occasional” literature. That does not mean that we can read it once in a while. It means that it was written for a specific occasion to address particular people about particular needs. So then, when it comes to a particular book of the Bible, we first ask what part the book plays in developing the grand theme of redemption. That is why it was written in the first place. It was not written to give 21^st Century man “lessons” or “principles” about life. It was written to address sinners who are in need of a Savior, and to call them to repentance and faith in Christ.

Furthermore, when it comes to a particular book, we ask what God’s message was to those people in the context of His redeeming work. The Old Testament is not simply a history of God’s dealings with Israel. It is the story (sermon) of God’s unfolding work of redemption as seen in His dealings with Israel. When we read a particular text in the OT we need to keep in mind what God was doing at that particular time so we can understand what contribution the particular book or even passage of the book made to the overall picture. That sounds like a lot of work! It is. It is a lot harder than just getting “lessons” out of an ancient text to apply to modern hearers. But it is also a lot truer to God’s original intention in the Book.

More to come, God willing…

The Bible: What it’s all about (2)

God graciously saves sinners through Jesus Christ.

Somewhere in the margin of my Bible I have noted a statement made by our pastor emeritus to the effect that the Bible is theocentric in scope and Christocentric in focus. This is right in line with the previous post on this topic: the Bible is all about God. Our pastor simply used bigger words, as he was wont to do, to say the same thing. The Bible is theocentric – God is the central character of the Bible. In fact, every other character simply plays a supporting role in the story. Every other person in Scripture has meaning only because of his place in the story of God’s redeeming work. They are not there for us to imitate them, but because they have some meaning or task in relation to God’s activity in salvation. The Bible is all about what God does, not about what we do. Of course, we experience what God does, but it is God who gives the experience to us. We do not somehow get it from God because of our actions. It is all of grace.

Being Reformed in perspective I believe that I am saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, as revealed in Scripture alone. By the grace of God we are what we are (1 Cor. 15:10). God’s saving work is a gracious work. That work is done through Christ. Therefore, the Bible is not only all about God, but also all about His work of redeeming us through Christ – it is Christocentric in focus. If we read the Bible with any other controlling thought in view, we will miss the message. If we preach the Bible with any other controlling thought in view we will fail to communicate the message.

In all our reading and study of God’s Book we need to keep His central theme in mind: He is graciously saving sinners through Christ.

More to come, God willing…