The Gospel Coalition

Prof. Leland Ryken of Wheaton College comments on “Paradise Lost” by John Milton on this his birthday.

“Jesus Christ warns them that if they disobey his commands, and do not repent, their church’s existence will be ignominiously terminated. ‘I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent’ (Revelation 2:5). No church has a secure and permanent place in the world. It is continuously on trial. . . . Many churches all over the world today have ceased truly to exist. Their buildings remain intact, their ministers minister and their congregations congregate, but their lampstand has been removed.”

John R. W. Stott, What Christ Thinks of the Church, page 33.

Bob Kauflin guides us wisely toward moderation in our otherwise intense opinions about church music here.

HT: Vitamin Z.

“They asked him, ‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them, . . . ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.’” Acts 1:6, 8

The disciples could have made a biblical case for their kingdom scenario. But their question “must have filled Jesus with dismay” (Stott, Acts, page 41). They wanted to regain something they had lost (note “restore”). God’s purpose all along and his next step now were both better than they thought. His true kingdom had always been spiritual, and the Holy Spirit was about to come down in unprecedented power.

We long for our kingdoms. We see them in the Bible and tell ourselves they are God’s kingdom. But he has a better way — the power of the Holy Spirit.

Are we smarter than the disciples back then? Shouldn’t we bring our enthusiasms under the judgment of “Not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42)? What if we actually got our way?

For example, some of us would like to be the next John Piper or Tim Keller or Mark Driscoll or whoever — a very personal kingdom dream — the way I’ve always wanted to be the next Billy Graham. But God’s plan for you is better. It’s you, the real you, clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:48). The you that you are by creation and redemption is not fundamentally a problem you have to work around but fundamentally a strategy God wants to work through.

May all our kingdoms fall away. May his power come down on us all.

“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, page 67.

“The book’s most pleasant surprise is her casual and unselfconscious repudiation of radical feminism as she watches a horse [at her farm]: ‘Suddenly the maleness, the majesty of its maleness, opens itself to me and I love it, revere it. Remember in a burst how I have always loved it, maleness, men themselves, all things masculine. . . . I had forgotten, too, its place in things, its half of the universe. As if in the years of feminism and the need to square imbalance it had seemed necessary to negate what claimed too much for itself.’”

Florence King, reviewing The Loony Bin Trip by Kate Millett, in Chronicles, June 1990, page 44.

“One way of catching class attention is to ask what advice [medical] students would give when presented with the following family history. The father has syphilis, the mother tuberculosis; they have already had four children — the first is blind, the second died, the third is deaf and dumb, and the fourth has tuberculosis. The mother is pregnant with her fifth child, and the parents are willing to have an abortion, should you so decide.

Assuming there aren’t too many Catholics in the class, you will usually find a majority in favor of abortion. You congratulate the class on their decision to abort — and then you tell them they have just murdered Beethoven.”

L. R. C. Agnew of the University of California School of Medicine at Los Angeles, quoted in “A gripping lesson on abortion,” The Palo Alto Times, 27 September 1977.

Two weeks ago Jani and I were in Dallas. On a free afternoon we drove over to Dallas Seminary and noticed a display honoring Dr. Howard Hendricks. Below his photograph was this quotation, etched in glass:

“I live with the dread of tame, domesticated Christianity. I fear for my students that they will chase after what they want — and therefore miss what God wants.”

Interesting. The single statement this man is to be remembered for highlights what scares him. Notice the operative words “dread” and “fear.”

What scares you? Does getting what you want scare you? Or does missing what God wants scare you?

I think it was Bonhoeffer who said that when a man is alone with his sin, he is terribly alone. Some men live their whole lives in this isolation, while outwardly role-playing relationships. The way to freedom is to come out into the light before God and before our wives (and probably before one other Christian man too), admit the truth and be surprised by the liberating power of James 5:16 confession. This video of one man’s story illustrates the freedom of walking in the light.

HT: Jared Wilson.