New Lampmode site launched May 31, 2007
Posted by brian in : Holy Hip Hop , 5comments
The new lampmode website has been launched. Please take some time and check it out here. In my opinion they are putting out some of the best Christian Music out there. Timothy Brindle’s Killing Sin album was one of the most sincere musical treatment of the addiction of pornography I have ever heard under the label of “Christian music”
For example listen to “Liberation”
or the “Bondservants”
or listen to My Portion
The excellency of God in Christ is not seen by us! May 30, 2007
Posted by brian in : John Piper, Biography , add a commentPiper:
“This is my aim and my burden for the Bethlehem Conference for Pastors. Not only because it is implicit in the sheer, awesome existence of God, and not only because it is explicit in the Word of God, but also because David Wells is staggeringly right when he says, “It is this God, majestic and holy in his being . . . who has disappeared from the modern evangelical world” (see note 1). Leslie Newbigen, from the British angle, says much the same thing: “I suddenly saw,” he writes, “that someone could use all the language of evangelical Christianity, and yet the center was fundamentally the self, my need of salvation. And God is auxiliary to that. . . . I also saw that quite a lot of evangelical Christianity can easily slip, can become centered in me and my need of salvation, and not in the glory of God” (see note 2). And, O, have we slipped. How many are the churches today where the dominant experience is the precious weight of the glory of God?
John Calvin saw in his own day the same thing Leslie Newbigen did. In 1538, the Italian Cardinal Sadolet wrote to the leaders of Geneva trying to win them back to the Catholic Church after they had turned to the Reformed teachings. He began his letter with a long conciliatory section on the preciousness of eternal life, before coming to his accusations of the reformation. Calvin wrote the response to Sadolet in six days in the fall of 1539. It was one of his earliest writings and spread his name as a reformer across Europe. Luther read it and said, “Here is a writing which has hands and feet. I rejoice that God raises up such men” (see note 3).
Calvin’s response to Sadolet is important because it uncovers the root of Calvin’s quarrel with Rome that will determine his whole life – as well as the shape of this lecture. The issue is not, first, justification or priestly abuses or transubstantiation or prayers to saints or papal authority. All those will come in for discussion. But beneath all of them, the fundamental issue for John Calvin, from the beginning to the end of his life, was the issue of the centrality and supremacy and majesty of the glory of God. He sees in Sadolet’s letter the same thing Newbigen sees in self-centered Evangelicalism.
Here’s what he said to the Cardinal: “[Your] zeal for heavenly life [is] a zeal which keeps a man entirely devoted to himself, and does not, even by one expression, arouse him to sanctify the name of God.” In other words, even precious truth about eternal life can be so skewed as to displace God as the center and goal. And this was Calvin’s chief contention with Rome. It comes out in his writings over and over again. He goes on and says to Sadolet that what he should do – and what Calvin aims to do with all his life – is “set before [man], as the prime motive of his existence, zeal to illustrate the glory of God” (see note 4).
I think this would be a fitting banner over all of John Calvin’s life and work – zeal to illustrate the glory of God. The essential meaning of John Calvin’s life and preaching is that he recovered and embodied a passion for the absolute reality and majesty of God. That is what I want you to see. Benjamin Warfield said of Calvin, “No man ever had a profounder sense of God than he” (see note 5). There’s the key to Calvin’s life and theology.
Geerhardus Vos, the Princeton New Testament scholar, asked the question in 1891, What is it about Reformed theology that enables that tradition to grasp the fullness of Scripture unlike any other branch of Christendom? He answers, “Because Reformed theology took hold of the Scriptures in their deepest root idea. . . . This root idea which served as the key to unlock the rich treasuries of the Scriptures was the preeminence of God’s glory in the consideration of all that has been created” (see note 6). It’s this relentless orientation on the glory of God that gives coherence to John Calvin’s life and to the Reformed tradition that followed. Vos said that the “all-embracing slogan of the Reformed faith is this: the work of grace in the sinner as a mirror for the glory of God” (see note 7). Mirroring the glory of God is the meaning of John Calvin’s life and ministry.
When Calvin did eventually get to the issue of justification in his response to Sadolet, he said, “You . . . touch upon justification by faith, the first and keenest subject of controversy between us. . . . Wherever the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished“. So here again you can see what is fundamental. Justification by faith is crucial. But there is a deeper root reason why it is crucial. The glory of Christ is at stake. Wherever the knowledge of justification is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished. This is always the root issue for Calvin. What truth and what behavior will “illustrate the glory of God”?
For Calvin, the need for the Reformation was fundamentally this: Rome had “destroyed the glory of Christ in many ways — by calling upon the saints to intercede, when Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and man; by adoring the Blessed Virgin, when Christ alone shall be adored; by offering a continual sacrifice in the Mass, when the sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross is complete and sufficient” (see note 9), by elevating tradition to the level of Scripture and even making the word of Christ dependent for its authority on the word of man (see note 10). Calvin asks, in his Commentary on Colossians, “How comes it that we are ‘carried about with so many strange doctrines’ (Hebrews 13:9)?” And he answers, “Because the excellence of Christ is not perceived by us” (see note 11). In other words, the great guardian of Biblical orthodoxy throughout the centuries is a passion for the glory and the excellency of God in Christ. Where the center shifts from God, everything begins to shift everywhere. Which does not bode well for doctrinal faithfulness in our own non-God-centered day.
Therefore the unifying root of all of Calvin’s labors is his passion to display the glory of God in Christ. When he was 30 years old, he described an imaginary scene of himself at the end of his life, giving an account to God, and said, “The thing [O God] at which I chiefly aimed, and for which I most diligently labored, was, that the glory of thy goodness and justice . . . might shine forth conspicuous, that the virtue and blessings of thy Christ . . . might be fully displayed” (see note 12).
Twenty-four years later, unchanged in his passions and goals, and one month before he actually did give an account to Christ in heaven (he died at age 54), he said in his last will and testament, “I have written nothing out of hatred to anyone, but I have always faithfully propounded what I esteemed to be for the glory of God” (see note 13).”
Calvin:
Are you asking Minimalist questions? May 29, 2007
Posted by brian in : John Piper, Holiness , 3commentsFrom Olympic Spirituality: How then shall we run?
The impulses that you have to control are impulses that weaken your zeal for God. In my family I try to tell the boys as they are growing up and they have to ask different things about right and wrong, television or music or movies or drugs or alcohol or whatever standards there are that you have to ask questions about, you are going to decide how you are going to live. I always say, don’t ask the main question “what’s wrong with it”. DON’T ASK THAT QUESTION. That’s a minimalist question. Runners who want to win don’t ask what’s the minimum training. They don’t ask that question. They ask, “what behavior will maximize my zeal for God” That’s the question to ask about rock music. That’s the question to ask about television, and ads on television. That’s the question to ask about leisure. That’s the question to ask about spending money. What actions, behaviors, habits will maximize my zeal for God. Will intensify my prayer life, will cause me to taste more of His word and love Him more, will make me more passionate for purity and for holiness. What things in my life have that effect on me, and what things drag me down, innocent though they look.
Now I know coming off vacation and watching enough television that I have made a decision that is right for me and for us not even to have one. I CANNOT GROW SPIRITUALLY AND WATCH TELEVISION, I CANNOT! Now that is just a comment on this man’s weakness ok? All I am talking about are the ads. The assault on my sexual life by the ads drags me down so far, pulls me out of the heavenlies where I want to live that I cannot do it. I cannot. If you can, you are free, YOU ARE FREE! to watch in Christ. BUT MARK IT GOD IS NOT CALLING YOU TO MINIMALIZE WHAT YOU CAN DO AND STILL BE A CHRISTIAN.
The Anomaly of the American Church May 27, 2007
Posted by brian in : John Piper, American Christianity , 7commentsPiper from Nothing Can Separate Us From The Love of Christ
“Now Americans you have to understand, our land for the last 300 years is an anomaly. Normal Christianity is persecution and danger. Only Americans who never read Operation World, or never go to international websites, only national ones, only Americans can think that this is normal. This is normal, what we are doing right now. No soldiers, no explosions, and no phone call threats, and no plastered walls, no fires set, this is normal. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. This is an anomaly, probably a footnote in history someday. All you have to do is read about Pakistan, and read about Nepal, and read about Sudan, and read about Indonesia. We are the exception, read about Vietnam. Go on line and find out from www.gem-werc.org how many martyrs there will be this year namely 164,000 at least in the world dying for their faith in Jesus Christ. So when you read this don’t say oh my, this must be an old fashion verse because I sure haven’t been killed. It isn’t an old fashion verse. It’s a verse that documents the anomaly of the American reality.
Now how do we respond to that, we Americans? I’ll tell you how we should respond, we should respond with Hebrews 13:3 “Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them.” We have been blessed with 300 years of massive security, and massive prosperity for one global reason, to magnify Jesus Christ in the hard places and to help our brother and sisters and to create brothers and sisters where it is hard. We are blessed to be a blessing, we not blessed to buy bigger houses and bigger cars and more vacations, we are blessed to cap our lifestyles and take the hundreds of millions and trillions of dollars that Christians have and give more than .02 percent to unreached peoples. That’s why we are blessed, and it will not last. While it is here, oh may we spend and be spent for the cause of Christ.
A Radical Relational Reordering May 22, 2007
Posted by brian in : John Piper, Marriage , add a commentI hope that I am not misunderstood, but I don’t think we really taste or see much of what he is saying in this sermon. We may acknowledge it as true, but we seldom move on it by faith. I am beginning to ask myself why I don’t move on these radical truths.
I have said this before, I know, but I am going to say it again. This marriage series is the best I have heard and well worth your time.
From Piper’s notes on this sermon
“Take heed here lest you minimize what I am saying and do not hear how radical it really is. I am not sentimentalizing singleness to make the unmarried feel good. I am declaring the temporary and secondary nature of marriage and family over against the eternal and primary nature of the church. Marriage and family are temporary for this age; the church is forever. I am declaring the radical biblical truth that being in a human family is no sign of eternal blessing, but being in God’s family is means being eternally blessed. Relationships based on family are temporary. Relationships based on union with Christ are eternal. Marriage is a temporary institution, but what it stands for lasts forever. “In the resurrection,” Jesus said, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30).
And when his own mother and brothers asked to see him, Jesus said, “‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!’” (Matthew 12:48-49). Jesus is turning everything around. Yes, he loved his mother and his brothers. But those are all natural and temporary relationships. He did not come into the world focus on that. He came into the world to call out a people for his name from all the families into a new family where single people in Christ are full-fledged family members on a par with all others, bearing fruit for God and becoming mothers and fathers of the eternal kind.
“Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” a woman cried out to Jesus. And he turned and said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:27). The mother of God is the obedient Christian—married or single! Take a deep breath and reorder your world.
“Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel,” Jesus said, “who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30). Single person, marriage person, do you want children, mothers, brothers, sisters, lands? Renounce the primacy of your natural relationships and follow Jesus into the fellowship of the people of God.
