A few months ago I shared a few lessons I’ve learned along the way—a few things I’ve learned about preaching since I rather unexpectedly found myself regularly standing in the pulpit. I learned that preaching can be discouraging, that preachers are fragile, that success in preaching is difficult to measure, and that preaching is a joy. Upon further reflection, I want to add a couple of items to my list.

Don’t Romanticize It

Another lesson I’ve learned is that the process of sermon preparation doesn’t live up to the romanticized version you might read about in books or in punchy little quotes. So much of sermon preparation is just plain hard work. I suppose it is possible that I have been going it all wrong, but I don’t think that’s the case.

I read several books about preaching before I ever preached a sermon. I read hundreds of great quotes about preaching and listened to sermons by some of the best preachers of our generation. I even attended several conferences for preachers and about preaching. Somewhere along the way I got the idea that preparing a sermon would be a blessed time of being carried along by the Holy Spirit as he gave me startling insights into His Word. I would spend hours in prayer, a few minutes reading commentaries, and just allow the Spirit to guide my pen.

But it turns out that most of sermon preparation is a tough slog of trying to understand difficult words, of desperately trying to find some kind of a structure in the text and then allowing that structure to inform the sermon. It is a battle of the mind and an all-out spiritual battle. There is prayer, to be sure. The Holy Spirit really does help in very tangible ways. And yet sermon preparation is a long and difficult battle full of metaphorical blood and very genuine sweat and tears. Reading books and listening to sermons didn’t prepare me at all to understand just how difficult it is to take a relatively straightforward passage, to understand it, to structure it, and to have something worthwhile to say about it.

Of course a lot of life is like this. There is what we imagine it will be like, or what we think it should be like, and then there is the reality. A young couple is eagerly expecting their new baby, and mom is imagining the joy of nursing a child, of snuggling that child as she feeds him. But then there’s the reality. Sure, nursing is sweet, but as so many moms can attest, it doesn’t always live up to its billing. There’s a lot more discomfort and pain than most young moms expect. Some women find they cannot do it at all, or that their child only wants a bottle. Infections set in. It doesn’t look a whole lot like the sweet pictures in the books. You could draw similar illustrations from just about every area of life. 

This is the 20th installment in a series on common theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification, incarnation, idolatry, the church, and holiness.

In the 9th sermon of John Piper’s epic series on the book of Romans he comes to Romans 1:16 (9 sermons and he’s only 16 verses in!), and tackles the question, “What is salvation?” The text is one you know well, I’m sure: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

Piper argues that salvation is best understood here as,

the final triumph of the gospel in bringing believers to eternal safety and joy in the presence of a holy and glorious God.

This definition is helpful in the way it summarizes several crucial points about the Christian doctrine of salvation:

First, Salvation comes through believing the gospel. The Bible teaches us that anyone—absolutely anyone—is a prime candidate for salvation. The only requirement is that they believe the good news of who Jesus is and what he did on the cross. Paul says this news is “the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). Notice the present tense of the word “believes”—those who would be saved must not only be converted to faith in Christ but must also persevere in that faith (1 Corinthians 15:1-2).

Second, Salvation has come … and is coming. We who believe in Christ “have been saved” (Ephesians 2:8), and yet we are still awaiting the “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5). Paul captures this reality when he says that believers have been “sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30) by the Holy Spirit: we are sealed for redemption (salvation), but the day of its fulfillment is still coming.

Third, Salvation is safety and joy before a holy God. The term salvation acknowledges that we have been saved from something. But what? The New Testament mentions a number of things that we are in bondage to apart from God’s salvation: demonic powers, the corruption of our bodies, sin, and so on. However, it is clear that the ultimate obstacle to our being saved is the holiness of God himself. “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God” (Romans 5:9). Salvation is both from and to: the gospel grants us safety from God’s wrath, which then frees us to enjoy the wonders of a saving God for all eternity.

More than once I have been accused of being a bibliolater, a person who idolizes the Bible, who has excessive reverence for the letter of the Bible. I'm sure many other Christians have been accused of this as well. In my experience, this charge tends to be leveled against those who affirm the infallibility or inerrancy of Scripture; it may also be leveled against those who affirm the sufficiency of Scripture. People who level such a charge are objecting to what they see as a woodenness of faith and practice that stems from an understanding of Scripture they deem too literal.

I am quite sure that I do not idolize the Bible and I am quite sure it is far more difficult to do than the accusers may think. Let me tell you how I think about this charge.

We, as sinful human beings, have lost the right and the ability to have unmediated access to God. Before they fell into sin, Adam and Eve had the privilege of walking and talking with God. They had direct, face-to-face access to the Creator. This is a privilege we eagerly anticipate reclaiming when the Lord returns, but in the meantime, polluted as we are by sin, we have severed that direct communication. We now rely on communication from God that is mediated by Scripture. John Stott once said, "God has clothed His thoughts in words, and there is no way to know Him except by knowing the Scriptures. ... We can't even read each other's minds, much less what is in the mind of God." God’s Word tells us that we can only know God as he actually, truly is, through that same Word.

The Bible is the Word of God. John Frame, in Salvation Belongs To The Lord, defines the word of God as "God's powerful, authoritative self-expression." God's word is powerful in that it does more than merely communicate, but also creates and controls. Frame says, "the word is the very presence of God among us, the place where God dwells. So you cannot separate the word of God from God himself."

Did you catch that? You cannot separate the word of God from God himself. The word reveals God. Frame goes on to show that the speech of God has divine attributes. It is righteous, faithful, wonderful, holy, eternal, omnipotent and perfect. Because these are attributes of God they are also attributes of his Word. He shows also that the word of God is an object of worship, quoting Psalm 56:4 where David writes, "In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?" The Psalmist repeats this in verse ten, saying ‘In God, whose word I praise, in the Lord, whose word I praise...’ This is remarkable, for only God is the object of religious praise. To worship something other than God is idolatrous. Since David worships the word here, we cannot escape the conclusion the word is divine."

This is the nineteenth installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification, incarnation, idolatry, and the church.

In a lecture titled “The Meaning of Holiness” (video), R. C. Sproul identifies two major scriptural meanings to the word holiness, one primary and one secondary, one in relation to God and one in relation to human beings.

The primary meaning is in relation to God, and it refers to his being separate or other. “When the Bible speaks about God’s holiness,” explains Sproul, “the primary thrust of those statements is to refer to God’s transcendance, to refer to his magnificence, to refer to that sense in which God is higher and superior to anything that there is in the creaturely realm.”

This meaning of holiness is implied all throughout the Bible, as it characterizes all of God’s attributes. God is holy in glory (Isaiah 6:3), power (Isaiah 52:10) and righteousness (Isaiah 5:16). For God to be holy means that, unless God makes it so, there is no one and nothing like him in any way.

Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? (Psalm 77:13)

Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. (Revelation 15:4)

The secondary meaning refers to our righteousness and purity. Holiness is the manner in which, by the Holy Spirit, God’s people live and act as imitators of God’s character, which is separate and other from the manner in which the world around us lives.

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (Peter 1:14-16)

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. (2 Corinthians 7:1)

This blog has introduced a challenge to my life that I hadn’t expected. It demands that at least part of my life—or thought life, at any rate—is lived out in public. This blog, like most others, is a place where I am able to think out loud in public and this affords every reader the opportunity to agree or disagree with me. This is well and good. Part of the joy of blogging is the measured exchange of ideas and opinions. But the surprise has been that people would not only agree or disagree, but would also assume motives, and publicly declare their understanding of why I do what I do and why I say what I say. I am accustomed to having people challenge my beliefs and ideas and enjoy it even, but don’t think I will ever grow used to having them assume my motives.

The other day I followed a link on Twitter and found a web site where various people were discussing something I had written. Have you ever had to read a long back-and-forth discussion where the subject is you? It is an odd and uncomfortable feeling (though, honestly, it didn’t devastate me; I felt very much like an outside observer). I had recently penned a book review and some were expressing disgust with me, telling others that I am merely a patsy, someone who is just a pawn in a greater agenda, answerable to some higher authority. Some were suggesting that I am desperately trying to curry favor with the Christian bigwigs, trying to ingratiate myself with the decision-makers. A couple dissented and defended me. But that discussion, and a few others I’ve been made aware of, tell me that there may be value in a quick word on book reviews.

One of the challenges of being a book reviewer, and especially a Christian book reviewer, is knowing what to do when a good guy writes a bad book or when a bad guy writes a good book. Of course the categories of “good guy” and “bad guy” are not very helpful since they are far too broad, but they can at least give us a starting point. Book reviewing is easy when D.A. Carson releases another exegetical masterpiece or when Benny Hinn releases another absolute trainwreck. But let’s imagine for a moment that Joel Osteen suddenly releases a book that is really, objectively good.

One day a book shows up at your door that has Osteen’s name and picture on the cover. As you flip through it, you see that this is a book about the gospel. The contents are a long and powerful defense of the good news of what Christ has accomplished. He calls sinners to repentance and closes with a plea for Christians to plant themselves in a healthy local church. How would you review a book like this one? Somewhere you would likely want to express that the book is objectively good but that some caution is still in order. You would want to make it clear that a good book does not immediately validate an entire ministry. You would want to express that this is a good book, but that his other books are just plain awful.

This is the seventeenth installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification, incarnation, and idolatry.

Wayne Grudem says it simply and well: “The church is the community of all true believers for all time.“ The church (Greek ekklesia) is the term used in the New Testament to refer to those who, through faith in the work of Christ, have been united together as one body, an eternal community that transcends time and place and that will one day share perfect fellowship with God forever.

Not only are these people united to one another, but they are united to Christ himself, who is the head of the body (Ephesians 1:22-23; 5:23). Or, to use the marriage analogy Paul introduces in this letter to the Christians at Ephesus, Christ is the husband in the one-flesh relationship between himself and his bride, the church (5:31-32).

This is the global sense of the term church which is used primarily in Ephesians and a few other places in the New Testament (e. g. Matthew 16:18 “on this rock I will build my church”). However, the bulk of the New Testament references to church refer to this community of Christ as it exists in its multiple, diverse, local expressions throughout the world. Paul begins several of his letters, “To the church of God that is in Corinth” or “To the church of the Thessalonians.” And the book of Revelation contains messages to seven particular Christian communities or churches (Revelation 2:1-3:22). So we are right to refer to all Christians as the church and we are right to refer to our local gatherings as churches.

That you belong to the global church implies that you will belong to and be actively involved in a local church as well, for, as Hebrews suggests, your faith and obedience depend on it:

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (Hebrews 10:23-25)

While I’ve always been an avid reader of books, in the past twelve months or so I’ve also become an avid listener. After seeing hundreds of Audible ads advertising “Download a Free Audiobook Today!” I finally went ahead and signed up and downloaded my free audiobook (and yes, you actually can join, get that free audiobook, and quit the program within fourteen days). There has been no looking back and I’ve become a bona fide lover of audiobooks. I listen while commuting, while doing dishes, and in that time when I’m too tired to read and but not tired enough to go to bed.

Here are a few of the books I’ve listened to in the past few months.

Washington by Ron Chernow

One of my long-term projects is to read (or listen to) a biography of each of the American presidents. Chernow’s Washington: A Life is a brilliant account of the life of George Washington. It represents 42 hours of listening, but it didn’t ever grow the least bit dull. There are two aspects to the life of the first President that stood out to me more than anything else. The first was the unexpected interplay between Washington’s pride and humility. Though he was a proud man—vain even—he was also motivated by higher ideals than self. So even while he was desirious of having power, he was willing to give it up. He is the one man in American history (the one man in human history, perhaps) who has had access to complete military power and complete political power and who has willingly given up both. That is remarkable. The other aspect of his life that stood out to me was the deep sadness of his wife. Both of the Washington’s wanted to live a quiet country life, and yet time and time again duty came calling, taking George away. Martha lived with constant sadness that she and her husband spent so much time apart. Her life displays just some of the sadness of life in a fallen world. (Buy it at Amazon or Audible)

Truman by David McCullough

As I continue to work my way through the presidents, I knew I wanted to move quickly to Truman since it collides with another of my projects—working my way through all of David McCullough’s books. McCullough’s biography is considered the definitive work and I can’t see how it will ever be equalled. Even longer than Washington, Truman clocks in at 54 hours, but is fascinating from beginning to end. To give a sense of the value of reading this biography, I’ll refer you to an article my mother wrote after she read it for the second time: My Favorite New Deal Mason. Here’s a key quote from that review: “I think Truman's fundamental weakness was his misunderstanding of human nature. He was a committed humanist and had no category for entrenched personal evil. This influenced many of his decisions in a way that has proven counter-productive over the long term.” (Buy it at Amazon or Audible)

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Through much of 2012 I had seen Behind the Beautiful Forevers on various lists of bestselling books, but it wasn’t until I returned from a week in India that I decided to pick it up. I’m glad I did. Boo spent three years in Annawadi, a Mumbai slum community. In this book she relates her experience there and tells about the lives of the people who live in that slum. I guess you might term this “narrative non-fiction” and it is very well done. She aptly highlights the despair of people who are victims of their circumstances and victims of the systemic corruption that plagues modern-day India. The contrast between rich and poor, between the haves and the have-nots, is stark and startling, the characters unforgettable, the stories tragic. (Buy it at Amazon or Audible)

Killing Kennedy by Bill O’Reilly

Killing Kennedy is the follow-up to O’Reilly’s Killing Lincoln. (Because of its narrow focus, it does not count toward my presidential biography project) Both books made their way to the New York Times list of bestsellers and are there still. Killing Kennedy is a short, punchy account of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It avoids swinging into conspiracy theory territory and simply recounts the facts as the history books have recorded them. It is fast-paced and well-told. Unfortunately it also has rather a “tabloid” feel. While no account of Kennedy’s life can be told without referring to his wild, unrepentant philandering, O’Reilly dwells there for a little bit too long, especially considering that this is an account of his death more than his life. There is no good reason for it, except that it is lascivious and, therefore, captivating. This book may still be worth listening to if you want to better understand one of America’s defining moments, but do be aware of that unfortunate secondary emphasis. (Buy it at Amazon or Audible)

Columbine by Dave Cullen

I listened to Columbine this summer, long before the tragedy in Newtown. Somehow recent events have made the shootings at Columbine High School seem even more tragic. Years after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered one teacher and twelve of their fellow students, Cullen assembled the facts and did his utmost to separate truth from error and fact from fiction. The book’s editorial description says it well: “Over the course of this gripping narrative, Dave Cullen approaches his subjects with unrivaled care and insight. What emerges are shattering portraits of the killers, the victims, and the community that suffered one of the greatest—and most socially and historically important—shooting tragedies of the 20th century.” One of the greatest lessons may be that it will take years before we can really know what happened at Newtown, Connecticut. It will take that long for the reports to be gathered and filtered. In the end, much of what we think we know will be corrected. (Buy it at Amazon or Audible)

This is the seventeenth installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification and incarnation.

“For what is idolatry if not this: to worship the gifts in place of the giver himself?” (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.17.36) Calvin summarizes well what it means to commit idolatry. Idolatry may well be in full view in the days to come as so many of us make our New Year’s resolutions. Do we make these resolutions because we want to honor God? Or are we resolving to do things that make us feel better about the idols we worship? Losing weight may be a noble goal, but not if we want to lose weight for all the wrong reasons.

The clearest places we see idolatry defined in Scripture are in two similar passages from Paul’s epistles:

For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. (Ephesians 5:5)

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. (Colossians 3:5)

In both of these passages, idolatry is used synonymously with covetousness. The Greek word behind covetousness (pleonexia) is defined as “the state of desiring to have more than one’s due,” which is to say that a covetous person is not content with what they’ve been alloted by God--including God himself--and so they are constantly looking elsewhere for their satisfaction. Does that sound at all familiar?

This means that idolatry is the same as covetousness in the sense that, as people remain (or become) discontent with who God is and what he has done for them, they look elsewhere for satisfaction. They divert their eyes from the Giver and look to his gifts for their fulfillment. This can include all sorts of physical pleasures, none of which is inherently bad—food, sex, exercise—as well as intangible things like ambition, productivity, learning, and social acceptance. As Tim Keller has taught us, anything can be, and everything has been, an idol.

The lesson for us in these, the final days of an old year, is to choose our New Year’s resolutions carefully and biblically.

Let me allow you in to a little secret of the blogosphere: The week between Christmas and New Years is the slowest week of the year for site visits. We are all busy and distracted and otherwise out of our routines, so traffic to blogs plummets to a mere forty or fifty percent of the usual. For that reason you’ll find many bloggers treading water, so to speak. Instead of investing a whole lot of effort in articles and series that will be missed by so many readers, they create lists and other lesser forms of content. For example, they might provide a round-up of the top stories at their blog from the previous year.

Speaking of which, I recently looked at the top articles of 2012 and was really surprised by what bubbled to the top. So here they are, as rated by the simple metric of page views, a measure of how many people pulled up the various pages in their browsers.

Heaven Is For Real - Heaven Is For Real continues to sell, though two or three of the competing “I went to heaven” books have given it some stiff competition in the genre.

Jesus Calling - Though my review of Sarah Young’s Jesus Calling was written in mid-2011, it continued to be read in 2012.

In Which I Ask Ann Voskamp’s Forgiveness - My review of Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts (#5 on this list) provides the context for this follow-up article.

Smilingly Leading You to Hell - Here’s one that I chewed over for months before finally posting it. It suggests that the attribute of “niceness” is a-biblical and massively over-rated.

Competitive Mothering - This article from May struck a nerve, though I can’t remember if it was a good or bad one.

One Thousand Gifts - My review of Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts takes the #5 spot for the year.

I Looked For Love In Your Eyes - This is an older article, a sad poem looking at the effects of pornography, that received some attention last year.

Visual Theology - My series of Visual Theology infographics caught on. I will group several of them together here, though they were the #3, #4 and #5 pages: The Order of Salvation, The Books of the Bible, The Attributes of God.

Real Marriage - I considered Real Marriage by Mark and Grace Driscoll a very disappointing book on marriage and critiqued it for much of what it teaches about sex.

Created To Be His Helpmeet - As I pulled up the list of this year’s most-read articles, I was very surprised to see this as the most-read. This review of Debi Pearl’s book on being a wife—an offensive and mean-spirited book that goes far beyond what Scripture teaches—must have resonated with others.

I guess the big takeaway here is that book reviews continue to lead the way. More specifically, critical reviews of popular books continue to lead the way. Not only that, but even the articles that were not book reviews, were in some way related to controversy (with the exception of Visual Theology). Clearly controversy sells, and people look to the blogosphere to help them sort through the compelling issues.

This is the sixteenth installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, and sanctification.

We sing joy to the world at Christmas, says Spurgeon, “because it is evermore a joyous fact that God should be in alliance with man, especially when the alliance is so near that God should in very deed take our manhood into union with his godhead; so that God and man should constitute one divine, mysterious person” (see “Joy Born at Bethlehem”).

This is what Christians mean when we speak of the Incarnation: the joining together of God and man in “one divine, mysterious person,” the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Incarnation is an especially joyful and important doctrine for Christians because, not only did God align with man, but through this alignment Jesus gained a human body that could in turn be sacrificed to endure God’s wrath. This was the only way that man could be saved. As Spurgeon explains,

Sin had separated between God and man; but the incarnation bridges the separation: it is a prelude to the atoning sacrifice, but it is a prelude full of the richest hope. From henceforth, when God looks upon man, he will remember that his own Son is a man. From this day forth, when he beholds the sinner, if his wrath should burn, he will remember that his own Son, as man, stood in the sinner’s place, and bore the sinner’s doom.

When we understand the purpose for which Jesus was incarnated, we can bring a much greater depth to our Christmas singing. We can sing carols like “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” with newfound wonder and worship as we consider the nature of the newborn Jesus, and the purpose for which he came:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate Deity,
Pleased as man with men to dwell,
Jesus our Immanuel…

Mild he lays his glory by,
born that man no more may die,
born to raise the sons of earth,
born to give us second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the new born King!”