Jul
16
A word from our namesake
Filed Under Christian Living, Holiness, Holy Spirit, Prayer, Puritans | Leave a Comment
The Sweet Dropper is named for English Puritan Richard Sibbes (1577-1635). Read our tribute to Sibbes. These words come from Sibbes’ The Soul’s Conflict, and Victory over Itself by Faith:
It were an easy thing to be a Christian, if religion stood only in a few outward works and duties. But to take the soul to task, and to deal roundly with our own hearts, and to let conscience have its full work, and to bring the soul into spiritual subjection unto God, this is not so easy a matter, because the soul out of self-love is loath to enter into itself, lest it should have other thoughts of itself than it would have.
The words speak of the depravity of the heart and the deceitfulness of sin. It’s no easy or pleasant task to think rightly about our lives. Many of us may enjoy analyzing our problems, but are we doing so in the light of God’s Word? Perhaps we are analyzing our lives in a self-serving, self-justifying way. We replay the mental DVD of wrongs committed against us. We sooth ourselves with arguments that hide the truth and shift the blame to others. None of us wants to acknowledge things about ourselves that we would rather deny. How do you learn to see straight when something inside is bending in the wrong direction? My old campus minister, Hal Farnsworth, is fond of asking people, “If you were deceiving yourself, would you know it?”
Join me in asking God to overthrow self-righteousness–yours and mine. Ask the Spirit to help you have “other thoughts of yourself” and to see clearly the grace of Christ Jesus coming to you in your sin and misery. Face up, and find mercy.
Jan
23
Because Jesus prayed…
Filed Under Christian Living, Holy Spirit, Prayer, The Church | Leave a Comment
Jesus prayed: he prayed daily, he prayed in the synagogue, he prayed at some critical moments in his ministry. When I think of Jesus’ prayers, I recall a conversation with a Jehovah’s Witness nearly twenty years ago in which he tried to prove that Jesus was not fully God on the basis that God would not need to pray to God. I also think back to well-intentioned teachers who tried to motivate me to pray through the guilt of the ‘Jesus never missed a quiet time; what’s wrong with you?’ line of reasoning.
In spite of those memories, more and more I find that a satisfying and comforting answer to the question ‘Why pray?’ is the fact that Jesus prayed. The eternal Son of God, agent and sustainer of creation, felt a compelling need to pray!
When you piece together a picture of Jesus’ prayer life from the Gospels, you find just over a dozen specific prayers (mostly short utterances, John 17 being the exception), along with parables and teaching and comments about prayer. Five times the Gospels tell us that Jesus would go off by himself to pray.
Jesus’ prayer habits, and especially his turning to prayer in times of crisis and at key events (his Baptism, before choosing the Twelve, at the ‘Mount of Transfiguration’ incident, and in dark Gethsemane), suggest that he found rest, comfort, renewal, and strength from praying to his Father. After an exhausting day of preaching and dealing with people and their needs he would withdraw to an isolated place to pray. There he found something he needed when he was drained. I have food to eat that you know nothing about, he replied when his disciples expressed concern over his physical condition at such times.
Consider what we read about Jesus in Luke 6, when Jesus prayed all night before choosing twelve disciples in whom he would invest so much of his energies. “One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles” (Luke 6:12). Actually, Luke’s account is the only example we have of Jesus praying all night. This apparently was not a habit. He slept as every other son of Adam sleeps, but here was a special occasion when he needed to go off alone to pray. He was the incarnation of the wisdom and power of God, but he needed to pray. He was about his Father’s business, but he needed to pray. He had no sin to confess, but he needed to pray. The Father delighted in him and the Spirit indwelt him, but he needed to pray. He had a lot to do, but he needed to pray. No matter how busy he was or how closely he walked with God there were times of prayer which he maintained.
This was a big moment; there were more than twelve from whom he could pick. The task called for power, illumination, guidance. Luke uses a simple phrase to describe Jesus’ intercession; ‘praying to God’, or literally ‘prayer of God’ (only Luke uses it and only on this occasion). Christ spent the night in the ‘prayer of God.’ In other words the emphasis was not on the night-long vigil so much as a praying of divine fellowship—an earnest concentration of heart and mind which was divinely sustained throughout the night. Twelve names were finally fastened on his heart and mind and he went forth that next morning and “called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve, designating them apostles” (v.13-14).
You would think he could say to God, “It’s OK; I can pick twelve–no problem.” Yet if even Jesus, before making such a great decision, needed to go aside and pray, then certainly we do. How can we with our uninformed insight, our own self-confidence, our own overrated abilities for handle life, come to any wise decision if we ignore prayer?
I want you to consider one more thing: how could this group of twelve constitute the answer to any prayer? We would expect the prayer and evaluation to result in an elite team of spiritual commandos fit for the mission. Instead we get a dirty dozen that includes the betrayer Judas, men on the opposite sides of the political spectrum (the Roman sympathizer Matthew and the ultra-right-wing conservative “Zealot” Simon), back-country fishermen (Peter, Andrew, James and John) and the others who do or say little that ever merits mention in the Gospels. More than that, these Twelve regularly disappoint their teacher and master with their cowardice, pettiness, feeble faith and outright stupidity.
This fact makes me hesitant to get so frustrated and put out with Jesus’ followers in my life. And, on the flip side, makes me aware that my wife prayed for a husband…and got me. My congregation prayed fervently over many months for a pastor…and got me. Jesus prayed…and got me. That’s gotta hurt!
Someone has said, ‘Prayer is not a means of removing the unknown and unpredictable elements in life, but rather a way of including the unknown and unpredictable in the outworking of the grace of God in our lives.’
As the Waterboys sing, “I’ve some to say, and I’ve more to tell” re: Jesus’ prayer life…
Oct
5
The Word did everything
Filed Under Bible, Holy Spirit, The Church | Leave a Comment
A gem from Martin Luther appeared yesterday on the excellent blog The Shepherd’s Scrapbook.
“I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philipp and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.”
There is great irony here, as I sit in my study to finish some necessary, albeit unfinished, tasks on my day off. And it gives me some ideas for the rest of the day…
Jul
31
Book review: The Holy Trinity
Filed Under Apologetics, Books, Christian History, Holy Spirit, Worship | Leave a Comment
The best and most challenging class I took in seminary was an elective class during my final semester under my favorite professor, Dr. Douglas F. Kelly. The class was ‘The Doctrine of the Trinity.’ The lectures and the reading were like hiking in high elevation–awe-inspiring, humbling views, but the oxygen was thin and I tired easily. Murray Garrott and I co-wrote a paper on ‘The Trinity and Personhood’ which was not all that great, but I managed to do well on the oral exam at the end. Those who want to catch the vistas these days have a great guide and companion along the mountain paths in Robert Letham’s The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship (P&R, 2004).
Letham is senior minister of Emmanuel Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, and adjunct professor of systematic theology at Westminster Seminary and the Washington/Baltimore extension of Reformed Theological Seminary. His book is divided into four parts: 1) Biblical foundations, 2) historical development, 3) modern discussion, and 4) critical issues (the incarnation, worship and prayer, creation and missions, and persons). While writing from a Reformed perspective, Letham interacts with theologians from all periods of church history and from a wide variety of backgrounds, from East and West, from Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
Most Christians do not have a biblically solid and precise understanding of the Trinity, finding it all ‘a mathematical conundrum, full of imposing philosophical jargon, relegated to an obscure alcove, remote from daily life’ (1). Letham is not attempting to write a ‘Trinity made simple’ book, but one that is thoroughly biblical and wide-ranging in its survey of the doctrines development and implications. For example, Letham observes that in Eastern Christianity (e.g., the Greek and Russian orthodox churches) there has been a tendency to fall into the error of subordinationism, viewing the Son and the Holy Spirit as deriving from the Father and thus not quite as much ‘God’ as the Father. In Western Christianity (Roman Catholicism and the Protestant churches) the tendency has been toward modalism, blurring or eclipsing the personal distinctions so as to view God as a single person who simple manifests himself at different times as Father, Son and Spirit.
All of this has daily significance because Christian experience of God and communion with God is inescapably Trinitarian. The design, accomplishment, and application of our redemption is a work of all three persons of the one true God. The Father, Son and Spirit are vitally united to worship and prayer. Letham presents a deep and thrilling case that embracing a full Trinitarian theology equips us to engage Islam and post-modernism with the claims of the Gospel, to engage Darwinism and pagan environmentalism with the biblical vision of order, coherence, unity and diversity in the universe, and end manipulation and lovelessness in our relationships with others. The ‘critical issues’ section of the book are worth the effort of working through the thicker parts of the historical development sections.
A Prayer from Service Book of the Syrian-Antiochene Orthodox Church, the all-night vigil service, the third hour:
Glory to thee, our God; glory to thee,
O heavenly King, the Comforter, Spirit of Truth, who are in all places and fill all things;
Treasury of good things and Giver of life:
come and take up thy abode in us,
and cleanse us from every stain; and save our souls, O Good One.
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy upon us.
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy upon us.
Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy upon us.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
now and ever, and unto ages of ages.
O all-holy Trinity, have mercy on us.
O Lord, wash away our sins.
O Master, pardon our transgressions.
O Holy One, visit and heal our infirmities.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
now and ever, unto ages of ages. Amen.
May
29
John Owen and Pentecost
Filed Under Books, Holy Spirit, John Owen | Leave a Comment
This past Lord’s Day was Pentecost Sunday, the occasion of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in fulfillment of the promise of Joel 2:28-32 (“I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh…”). In the Old Testament Pentecost was a feast that celebrated the first fruits of the year’s harvest (Exodus 23:16; Numbers 28:26). In the New Testament, the fulfillment appears, and the long-expected Day of the Lord has arrived: the powers of the age to come are released; the harvest of the world begins to come in. Christ—crucified, risen and ascended—pours out the Spirit in unrestrained measure and without geographical or ethnic limitation. The gospel promise “is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself” (Acts 2:39).
John Owen wrote Pneumatalogia, or A Discourse concerning the Holy Spirit in 1674. It
is a massive work occupying 650 pages in the Banner of Truth edition of Owen’s works (volume 3). Volume 4 contains a number of other works by Owen on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Banner of Truth Trust has also released an abridged and modernized version, edited by R.J.K. Law, in their ‘Puritan Paperback Series’ entitled The Holy Spirit, to make Owen’s monumental work a bit more accessible to contemporary readers. The Sweet Dropper, who has read and outlined the entirety of the originals in volumes 3 and 4, highly recommends the paperback.
Here is a good taste of the abridged version, which I read during Evening Worship:
The great privilege prophesied of the gospel age, which would make the New Testament church more glorious than that of the Old, was the wonderful pouring out of the promised Holy Spirit on all believers. This was the good wine which was kept to the last (Isa. 35:7; 44:3; Joel 2:28; Ezek. 11:19; 36:27).
The ministry of the gospel by which we are born again is called the ministry of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:8). The promise of the Holy Spirit under the gospel is to all believers and not just to a special few (Rom. 8:9; John 14:16; Matt.28:20). We are taught to pray that God would give us his Holy Spirit, so that with his help we may live to God in the holy obedience he requires (Luke 11:9-13; Matt. 7;11; Eph. 1:17; 3:16; Col. 2:2; Rom. 8:26). The Holy Spirit was solemnly promised by Jesus Christ when he was about to leave the world (John 14:15-17; Heb. 9:15-17; 2 Cor. 1:22; John 14:27; 16:13). So the Holy Spirit is promised and given as the only cause of all the good that in this world we can partake of.
There is no good that we receive from God but it is brought to us and wrought in us by the Holy Spirit. Nor is there in us any good towards God, any faith, love, obedience to his will, but what we are enabled to do by the Holy Spirit. For in us, that is in our flesh, there is no good thing, as Paul tells us…The Holy Spirit’s work is to bring to completion what the Father had planned to do through his Son. By this, God is made know to us, and we are taught to trust in him. (p.19,21)