Serving Without Sinking

Serving Without SinkingYou may be one of those Christians who serves. And serves. And serves some more. When you head to church on Sunday you are preparing yourself to serve and when you return home you are exhausted. And if you are one of those servant-hearted Christians it may just be that the more you serve, the more you see how so many other Christians serve sparingly and half-heartedly. You may find that it is a challenge to serve Christ and to keep your joy.

Enter Serving Without Sinking by John Hindley. This is a book about happens inside our minds and hearts as we do our acts of Christian service. It is a call away from weariness, discouragement, bitterness and joylessness as we serve. And it does that by pointing us to the greatest Servant of all--the one who came to us not to be served but to serve. "This book isn't primarily about our service. It's mainly about Jesus Christ, and about His service. ... Jesus does not want you to measure your life by your service of Him. He does not want your service to get in the way of your love for Him. He did not come to be served by you--He came to serve you." This one truth is remarkably freeing. It frees us from service done to earn or impress or compare and instead allows us to enjoy the ways in which he serves us. But, of course, when we are so loved and so served, we will long to joyfully serve in return.

"When it comes to Christian service, the first place to look is at what is going on in our hearts, not what we are doing with our hands." For this reason Hindley invests some time in exploring heart motivations that guide our service. He encourages the reader to see that God cares far more about the love behind our deeds than the deeds themselves. And yet we can so often serve out of a wrong view of God or a wrong view of people. We can serve to win God's favor or we can serve to be seen and praised by men.

Perhaps the book's most unusual but most helpful application is for the servant-hearted Christian to consider serving less. Some of us serve as if our service is a pillar that holds up the church and as if God's kingdom is dependent upon our shift in the nursery or our crock pot full of meatballs.

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A La Carte (5/21)

The Goodness of God and the Reality of Evil - Dr. Mohler reflects on the tornado in Oklahoma: “Every thoughtful person must deal with the problem of evil. Evil acts and tragic events come to us all in this vale of tears known as human life. The problem of evil and suffering is undoubtedly the greatest theological challenge we face.”

The Mystery of Suffering and Sovereignty - Sam Storms, who pastors in Oklahoma City, also reflects on the tragedy.

Christian Adoption - John Piper responds to some recent criticisms of evangelical adoptions with a series of disavowals and affirmations.

14 Ways to Use the Bible - Here is a list of 14 ways to use the Bible.

Complaining to God - R.C. Sproul provides an answer to this question: “Is it Ever Legitimate to Complain to God or to Express Anger to God?”

Sanctification by Time Travel - “The Bible encourages us to spiritual time travel. The believer uses faith to transport herself into the future, a spiritual experience that has significant sanctifying impact on the present (2 Peter 3:11). And in Romans 6, the believer uses faith to transport himself back in time, again with significant present impact.”

The saints are chastened and the sinners are enriched: this is no small trial of faith. —C.H. Spurgeon

Best Commentaries on Ruth

Series Introduction: I live in a small house. I work in a small office in a small church. For those reasons and others I will never have a huge library. When I add a book I almost always remove a book, a practice that allows me to focus on quality over quantity. Over the past couple of years I have focused on building a collection of commentaries that will include only the best volumes on each book of the Bible. I know when I'm in way over my head, so before I began I collected every good resource I could find that rated and reviewed commentaries. I studied them and then began my collection on the basis of what the experts told me. Since I did all of that work, and since I continue to keep up with the project, I thought it might be helpful to share the recommendations.

My focus is on newer commentaries (at least in part because most of the classics are now freely or cheaply available) and I am offering approximately 5 recommendations for each book of the Bible, alternating between the Old Testament and the New. Today I have turned to the experts to find what they say about Ruth.

Ruth

Hubbard RuthRobert Hubbard, Jr. - The Book of Ruth (New International Commentary on the Old Testament, 1989). Ruth is one of the few books of the Bible that I have preached straight-through and, therefore, one I can speak to from at least a bit of personal experience. Hubbard’s receives near-unanimous praise and Keith Mathison says it well: “Robert Hubbard's commentary on Ruth is a model of how commentaries should be written. It is careful and clear. It manages to deal with both details and the big picture. This is the first commentary to which one should turn with questions about the Book of Ruth.” It was certainly helpful to me. (Amazon, Westminster Books)

Daniel I. Block - Judges, Ruth (New American Commentary). Block’s commentary covers both Judges and Ruth and is highly recommended for its treatment of both books. Longman gives it a 5-star rating and says "This contribution is clearly the best thing available on the book of Judges [and, Ruth]. Block is thoroughly aware of all the literature that precedes his own, and he incorporates what is good and criticizes what is bad." He also praises Block's insights along with his literary and theological analysis. (Amazon, Westminster Books)

Duguid RuthIain Duguid - Esther & Ruth (Reformed Expository Commentary). I read this one devotionally before reading it during sermon preparation and in both uses found it very, very helpful. It is a sermon-based commentary and ideal for giving an example of how to preach the text and how to illustrate and apply it. This is one of my favorites in the Reformed Expository Commentary series. (Amazon, Westminster Books)

 

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A Knight in Shining Blubber

We all know that the story of Jonah is really the story of Jonah and his whale, right? Every childrens' Bible majors on that whale and its role in miraculously delivering Jonah from the depths of the sea. The whale is the hero of the story, the knight in shining blubber who comes to the rescue.

Except, of course, that he isn't (and may not be a whale at all since the Bible identifies him only as a "giant fish"). We just need to fast-forward a little bit and go to the life of Christ where he tells us that the story of Jonah is really all about him. Jonah is about Jesus. Jesus is the hero of the story. Here is what Jesus says in Matthew 12 after the Scribes and Pharisees ask him for a sign, a circus trick that would validate his claims.

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

As Jesus interprets Jonah he shows that it points to him. He shows that Jonah serves as a type of Christ, a pointer to the future Savior, and says that there is a correlation between Jonah's three days in the belly of the fish and Jesus' three days in the tomb ("the heart of the earth"). This is not to say that the story of Jonah isn't real and didn't have immediate, historical application. It really happened and was really meant to teach God's people in that day. However, Jonah's story was to serve a greater and longer-lasting purpose in pointing people to a future Savior and in teaching something about that Savior. Today we read Jonah in both of these ways, as a prophetic book that speaks to God's people in Jonah's day, and as a book that points us to Jesus Christ.

As I thought about this I was struck by an application: If we are going to make the story of Jonah all about a giant fish, we should make the story of Jesus' death and resurrection all about a tomb. The childrens’ Bibles should spend a whole chapter and all kids of illustrations showing that tomb and discussing its intricacies. We should spend all kinds of time talking about the way a tomb was carved out of rock, and consider the type of rock, and what color it was, and what it would have felt like and smelled like and how a door would have been constructed and placed in front of the opening, and what it would have cost, and all the rest.

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A La Carte (5/20)

Here are the best of the current Kindle deals: Praying Backwards by Bryan Chapell ($1.99); the Trailblazers series (biographies for teens) is on sale for just $2.99 each: Helen Roseveare: On His Majesty’s Service, George Whitefield: The Voice that Woke the World, David Brainerd: A Love for the Lost, John Newton: A Slave Set Free, and Joni Eareckson Tada: Swimming Against The Tide. Bruce Shelley’s Church History in Plain Language ($4.99); Luke - Acts in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary set ($7.59); John - Acts in the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary ($7.59). The Art of Neighboring by Jay Pathak, Dave Runyon ($4.99); The Holman Bible Atlas ($4.99) and The Holman Illustrated Guide to Biblical History ($4.99).

Why Have Babies? - Candice Watters offers a really helpful take on this question: Why have babies? “You may think your reasons for having babies are biblical, but if you’re like me, you’ve absorbed a lot more culture and a lot less Bible than you realize.”

Aiming at Heaven - A missionary seems particularly able to speak to this subject: “If there is one thing this life has taught me, it’s that I must hold loosely to everything. Everything. I can’t put down roots anywhere; I will never find stability.”

An Act of War - Going to church is an act of war. Here’s why.

The Personal Purgatory of Kevin Tunell - “In the early hours of Friday, January 1, 1982 the seventeen year-old Kevin Tunell made the biggest mistake of his life. At a New Year's party near Washington DC, he got very drunk; his friends urged him not to drive but he insisted, ‘Nothing will ever happen to me’.” A tragic and strange story unfolds.

A Biblical and Scientific Adam - “As the battle between Darwinism and the Bible rages, some evangelicals have backed away from maintaining that Adam and Eve were real, historical individuals created in the way Genesis 2 relates.” Vern Poythress recently wrote a long article explaining why such a surrender is wrong biblically and scientifically.

If God should have no more mercy on us than we have charity to one another, what would become of us? —Thomas Fuller

Hymn Stories: Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah

If Isaac Watts is known as the father of English hymnody, William Williams (1717-1791) is considered by many to be the father of Welsh hymnody.

In 1738 Williams heard a sermon by the revivalist preacher Howell Harris, a fiery Welsh layman who had been influenced by the Methodist movement in England. It was through this sermon that Williams discerned his calling to go into the ministry.

Williams first pursued becoming an Anglican priest (in the Church of Wales) and entered as a deacon in 1740. However, he soon came to discover that his heart was with Harris and his itinerant work, and before long he left his small curacy in the mountains to join with the traveling Methodist preachers.

The revivalists realized that the Welsh language was lacking in hymns--the church in Wales was still primarily singing metrical psalms in their worship services. In order to promote the creation of hymns, Harris put together a hymn-writing competition between the different preachers.

As Louis Benson relates, “the prize fell easily to Williams Williams, who had the poet’s passion and a gift of verse-writing. Therefore it was not very long before he was recognized as poet laureate of the Welsh revival.”

Williams would go on to write many hymns in both Welsh and English. “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” appeared in Welsh in 1745. Twenty six years later, in 1771, a Rev. Peter Williams translated the first verse into English, prompting William Williams to translate the rest of it into English as well.

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Weekend A La Carte (5/18)

The Kindle edition of one of my favorite books on prayer is on sale for just $1.99: Praying Backwards by Bryan Chapell. Christian Focus has several of their Trailblazers series on sale for just $2.99 each. These are biographies targeted at young teens. Helen Roseveare: On His Majesty’s Service, George Whitefield: The Voice that Woke the World, David Brainerd: A Love for the Lost, John Newton: A Slave Set Free, and Joni Eareckson Tada: Swimming Against The Tide. Remember as well that Bruce Shelley’s Church History in Plain Language is $4.99.

Explore the World - Here’s a fascinating way to pass a few minutes. Using Google Map’s street view, you get dropped somewhere in the world and have to try to guess where you are.

Embarrassing Moments in Ministry - I haven’t been in ministry long enough to have a collection of embarrassing moments like these. Here’s hoping I avoid the worst of them!

Too Important to Outsource - There are many things in life we can outsource, but some are just too important and we have to do them ourselves. This article talks about the importance of parents discipling their own children.

Prepare Children for Times of Doubt - In a similar vein, C Michael Patton writes about how to prepare your children for times of doubt.

The Course of Christian History - Gospel Coalition asked four church historians this question: “After AD 70, what day most changed the course of Christian history?”

Working on a Sermon Saturday Night - There is some wise counsel for pastors in this article. “Many of the pastors that I interact with are frustrated that they are working on their sermons well into the weekend. If this is you consider applying the following principles to help you recapture your Saturdays.” Now, to go work on my sermon a bit…

The custom of sinning takes away the sense of it, the course of the world takes away the shame of it. —John Owen

Free Stuff Fridays

Free Stuff Fridays
This week’s Free Stuff Fridays is sponsored by Christian Focus. They are giving some great prize packages this week. There will be five winners and each of them will receive these five new books.

Kingdom ComeKingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative by Sam Storms - Described by Kevin De Young as "the standard bearer for Amillennialism for years to come.” Kingdom Come offers an alternative and a biblical rationale to the widely held view of Premillennialism: that Christ’s return will be followed by 1,000 years before the final judgement. This book reveals that this is not the only option for Christians. This is a substantial work which will challenge and encourage. Storms explain the belief that the 1,000 years mentioned in the book of Revelation is symbolic, with the emphasis being the King and his Kingdom. So that even those who remain unconvinced will need to reckon with the powerful case made for Amillennialism by reading this work.

Supernatural Living for Natural People: The Life-giving Message of Romans 8 by Ray Ortlund. This exposition of Romans 8 weaves together both truth and application, both theology and the realities of everyday life. Romans 8 is a favourite of many Christians, it contains verse after verse of spiritual gold. This book enhances our appreciation and understanding of the chapter and through it, we will be thoroughly revitalised.

The AscensionThe Ascension: Humanity in the Presence of God by Tim Chester. The story of the Ascension in the Bible is the story of the one man who made it into Heaven for us, to present his finished works to God the Father on our behalf. This is the story of Jesus the man in God's presence. The Ascension is a small book on a big doctrine, who is this ascended Jesus? He is King, Priest and man and is still at work for us in our everyday lives today.

The Cross in the Experience of Our Lord by R.A. Finlayson. Look on the bookshelf of many Scottish Christians and you will find an old, battered copy of this classic book, little known outside of Scotland, by the Scottish Theologian R A Finlayson. Re-released to a much wider audience and introduced by Carl Trueman, this tremendously profound book explores the significance and mystery of the cross in a compelling and powerful way.

66 Books One Story66 Books One Story: A Family Guide to Every Book of the Bible by Paul Reynolds. This is an excellent resource for children, parents and churches alike. The Bible has one author - God - so we need to see the Bible as a whole, as God’s Word. In this Bible overview each book of the Bible is summarised; background given; themes and theology explained, while detailing the thread of Salvation History running through them all. It can equip both children and their parents in their ambition to know the Bible and Christ in a much more informed and loving manner. 

Giveaway Rules: You may enter one time. As soon as the winners have been chosen, all names and addresses will be immediately and permanently erased. Winners will be notified by email. The giveaway closes Saturday at noon.

Sex, Dating, and Relationships

Sex Dating RelationshipsLast night my wife and I sat and did a rough tally of the number of couples we have known as they have gone through dating and engagement. It's a pretty good number of friends, family, and fellow church members. Then we thought about how many of them maintained healthy and God-glorifying physical boundaries and how many had confessed that they had not. The numbers were suddenly not looking nearly so good. This is one of those areas where contemporary Christians so often do very poorly and this is exactly why there have been so many recent books on dating, courtship, purity and all the rest. Christians are failing and desperately looking for a better way.

It has been some time since I have read a book on dating and relationships, probably because it has been some time since the subject has seemed urgent to me. But recently a local pastor told me that as he pastors young adults toward marriage, he has been helped by Sex, Dating, and Relationships by Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas. I decided to check it out and I am glad I did so.

Hiestand and Thomas call their approach to relationships "a fresh approach" and this is an accurate way of describing it. They don't kiss dating goodbye and they don't advocate a return to the courtship of years gone by. Instead they encourage Christians to form "dating friendships." In this little phrase "dating" is the activity and "friendship" is the relational category. You are not boyfriend and girlfriend, but friends, and you spend time together (i.e. date) as friends for the purpose of seeing if there is mutual interest and compatibility. Romance and sexual activity and commitment can wait; for now, it is simply "two friends getting to know each other with a view toward marriage."

Think of a dating friendship as a precursor to a marriage proposal but without all the romantic, sexual overtones that so often accompany a dating relationship. A couple in a dating friendship, regardless of their attraction to each other, doesn't pretend there is more to the relationship than is warranted. They consciously refrain from sexual and overtly romantic activity and don't become naively optimistic about the commitment level of their friendship. Thus, the main goal of a dating friendship is to explore the viability of marriage while preserving the guidelines of sexual and romantic purity required by the neighbor relationship.

Integral to the argument is an understanding of how the Bible guides and restricts sexual activity. God gives us clear sexual boundaries to guide marriage relationships (sex is required), neighbor relationships (sex is forbidden) and family relationships (sex is forbidden). The authors want dating couples to understand that until they are married, their relationship to the person they are pursuing is a neighbor relationship in which any sexual activity or even the awakening of sexual desire is inappropriate. What is conspicuously absent from the Bible is a category that falls between neighbor and spouse. Yet this is where so much of our relationship confusion comes from--an invented category that is more than one but less than the other and lacking any clear biblical guidelines.

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A La Carte (5/17)

There are a few new Kindle deals for you: Which Bible Translation Should I Use? by Andreas Kostenberger ($4.74); How We Got the Bible ($3.47); Luke - Acts in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary set ($7.59); John - Acts in the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary ($7.59). The Art of Neighboring, a book I really enjoyed, is $4.99.

Daily Slogging - Ray Ortlund with a great blog post: “I am not impressed by young pastors who seem too eager to publish books and speak at big events and get noticed.  They are doing the work of the Lord, and that's good.  But what impresses me is my dad's daily slogging, year after year, in the power of the Spirit, with no big-deal-ness as the payoff.”

What’s In a Name? - I wrote a couple of days ago about hearing God speak through his Word. Here’s another article on that very thing.

Legalize Polygamy - It’s just a matter of time. Society’s got no foundation left to battle this: “The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less ‘correct’ than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults.”

One Ministry, Two Kingdoms - Here’s a helpful one from Paul Tripp: “It took God employing hardship for me to embrace the inescapable reality that everything I did in ministry was done in allegiance to, and in pursuit of, either the kingdom of self or the kingdom of God.”

$5 Friday - Ligonier’s $5 Friday has a few good items including electronic editions of Anthony Carter’s Blood Work and the print edition of R.C. Sproul’s Abortion.

The Psalms - I grew up singing a lot of the Psalms, often unaccompanied by instruments. So I feel right at home with these recordings (HT Carl Trueman). Also be sure to check out this fascinating video of Gaelic psalms.

Till men have faith in Christ, their best services are but glorious sins. —Thomas Brooks