Pigtails

We were at church the other weekend and a little girl was being baptized. I love baptisms, but this one was really making me think. 

"How can this little girl with pigtails have more confidence in the gospel than me?" I questioned in my mind.

"I can tell you why I disagree with J.I. Packer and why I do agree with John Piper. I can tell you why I think Driscoll & Spurgeon don't go far enough at some points. I can tell you why Dawkins is ultimately wrong. But I can't have the confidence this little girl has in the gospel?" My mind began to formulate the arguments against me.

For two weeks this has been bouncing around in my skull and I couldn't really get it out. But reading this has helped, 

"Beware, therefore, lest what is said in the Prophets should come about: Look you scoffers, be astonished and perish; for I am doing a work in your days, a work that you will not even believe, even if one tells it to you." Acts 13:40-41

Beware, O my mind, lest you miss what is going on before your waking eyes. Beware, O my mind, lest the preachers speak the truth of the ages to you and you do no believe. Beware, O my mind, lest the astonishment of your redemption is lost for want of knowledge.

I stand in no other place than that little girl with the pigtails stands. I know no more than the child in the water. The knowledge of the holy has not saved me - indeed it cannot. The coming of God in the flesh taking my sin, God's wrath and my shame has done it, finished it and won me.

Not so much that I believe this, or that I cling to this truth like a shipwrecked rat, but that this truth holds me - that it grips me tighter than my gradually loosening skin. I could want for more faith to believe the beauties of the realities of the gospel, but ultimately it is not something I hold, it holds me. It holds me. He holds me.

He holds me like a raft in the midst of the tempest of death. He holds me like the Shepherd holds the forlorn lamb. He holds me like the husband holds his weeping wife. He holds me.

You see, my knowledge or my faith could not convince me of my faith. They couldn't convince me because they're mine and the fallibility of me is astounding. But that faith is not mine, it's His. His faith in himself to save this sinners for his glory. This is my faith and confidence. The rope is tide tight roundabout my heartstrings and will not let me go, and I cannot let it go.

The Title Explained: Why my blog is called what it's called. (Pt 2)

Just after I became a Christian as a graduation gift from my brother-in-law I received a box full of books – just a box full of books, no fancy graduation wrapping or anything – just a box of books. As an 18-year-old kid this was, well to be honest, it was a little underwhelming. The names on the spines of the books read, “Spurgeon,” and it was a name I was hardly familiar with.

There were three sets of books some brown ones, green ones, and some that looked like they’d been printed in the sixties because of the cheesy cover art on the front. But there was something that kept drawing my mind and eye to these books among all the other gifts.

Little did I know that my world and view of the Christian tradition was about to be moved and transformed in such a way so as to never be the same and never to want look back. John Piper talks of Lewis as coming over the horizon of his life, and this is how I speak of Spurgeon, he walked over the horizon of my life and brought me into many green pastures of growth, guided me in long walks among quiet rivers and taught me the meaning of silence, prayer, words, and true eloquence. This under-shepherd of the true Shepherd herded my life along even though it was more than one hundred years after his final breath.

A shift happened for me here, I began to wonder about all these other names I’d heard about and the depth of insight they too might offer to a kid wanting to be a pastor. Names like Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Lewis, Stott, Packer, Augustine and many others became my teachers in those early days. And all of them echoed the glorious truth of the authority, inerrancy, and infallibility of Scripture – that it is, “Divine Writ.”

Spurgeon taught me what it is to be a pastor, more than any other man I’ve worked for or with he has taught me what it is to be a man in the Word. Discipleing me to follow God and no other, to let the times change and the Scripture remain unassailably the same; to preach incessantly and unapologetically the gospel; to speak with heart-burning conviction; to not let up, or back off, or give in until Christ himself welcomes me with, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

Therefore the title of the blog, “Aspiring Spurgeon,” might be simple to decode now. By the mercy and grace of God almighty I hope that words I write will someday impact the heart of one person in such a way that Spurgeon has impacted me. It’s a tall order to be sure, to desire to impact someone’s life for all eternity, but God has used men throughout all of history to impact and grow other men – that’s why we’re called ‘ambassadors’ – so I believe he can use the wretch that I am to impact one other person.

What The Hell Am I Saved From? What I Believe About Hell & Why (Pt 7)

It seems odd to have a section that only highlights the benefits of why one should believe in the eternality of hell. It’s crazy to think there are pluses to this immense minus. But there are many.

First I would put this doctrine in my category of  “Devastatingly Beautiful.” This is where I put the doctrines that are so dangerous and devastating but also afford and allow for such worship as cannot be brought by any song I’ve heard or sung.

The eternality of hell is devastating because real people go to a real hell – forever. There are no second chances after death. In fact this life we live has second chances every second. After death there is one place for those who have spurned God’s call and shunned his righteousness and aimed to live their own life without God. God mercifully gives them what they desire – an eternity without his closeness. We cannot come to this dry-eyed or bushy-tailed. This ought to take the wind out of our sails and crush us on the rocks of devastation. People will die and they will suffer forever…

Think about that, people you know will die and they will suffer endlessly. Think about their screams; try to imagine their pain. Now think there’s a way out of that torment – that terrible suffering – a way has been made to release you and them from your and their just damnation and his name is Jesus! He bore that incomprehensible wrath in your place for your sins! Do you love your friends? Of course, now tell them to be saved, redeemed by Jesus! At the heart of the arguments on the limitations of hell is a dangerous plot to lose the urgency of missions. Our dying world must be saved from the just torment of eternity. And only God can save them from his own wrath through Jesus’ atoning death.

Now think about the beauty of salvation! See the storm clouds of God’s divinely just wrath poured out completely on Jesus – you see the only way that Jesus could bear the eternal wrath of God is because he himself is a part of the eternal Being. The only possible way for God’s entire eternal wrath to be cleared from your name is if Jesus being fully God and full man stood and took that wrath for you – it’s the doctrine of propitiation - because only an eternaly Being could bear an eternity of wrath in on the cross.

We cannot lull our friends or family into a false sense of security by allow them to think hell is ending or that it is not going to be terrible. To allow them to think such things would be like leading them there yourself. Spurgeon said in Lectures to My Students something that has stuck with me for years essentially it is this: Do not be a blind pastor leading you people blindly to hell; an unredeemed pastor is like a blind man making claims about beautiful paintings or a deaf man telling the world of Mozart, he cannot tell the world of what he does not know. Therefore make sure you know and believe the gospel lest you lead your congregation to hell and be greeted there by their screams of torment, “You lead us here!” This will be the screams of those we love if we do not tell them urgency and dangerousness of hell and the beauty of the salvation of Jesus.

Ask yourselves what makes missions seem more urgent hell that is ending or hell that is eternal? Ask yourself what makes God’s hatred against sin more perfect hell that is ending or hell that is eternal? Ask yourself what makes God’s salvation more inescapably beautiful hell that is ending or hell that is eternal? Ask yourself what makes God’s glory so vast as to truly show us that what we know of God is limited and finite hell that is ending or hell that is eternal? Finally ask yourself what shows God’s way to be far higher than our ways, hell that is ending or hell that is eternal?

Reading Excited

So, been reading Karl Barth's "The Epistle to the Romans" and lovin' it. Something about this book has me excited and, as of yet, I can't tell you what or why for.

There was a time, when I was a freshman in undergrad, that I'd go to class then to Starbucks and just sit and read Scripture. That was it; the pure excitement of reading the Bible was enough to keep me busy – and happy - for at least two cappuccinos (back then I packed ‘em with sugar, now it’s straight black unadulterated beautiful coffee).  The book of Romans in that Bible is unreadable; there are too many notes, too many different colored highlights, too many tearstains and underlinings.

Then I jumped into reading and rereading dead guys Spurgeon, Edwards, Calvin, Luther, and Scougal these men were my closest friends in those days. Friday nights would be spent at a table outside Starbucks with some old book and tea or coffee rather than a party or the movies. If it was written I read it, if it was preached I listened to it, if it was blog-able I tried to write about it (this blog has been around since those days).

But sometime after those days the excitement of reading was lost – it’s not that I stopped reading, it’s that I just grunted through it. But I didn’t know I’d lost it until a couple weeks ago… That was a difficult Thursday evening realization.

Feeling the lack of enthusiasm to want to know God. Not really feeling ‘big enough’ to handle deep theology. Condemning myself for the legalism of my faith and seeing the practice of my faith as false. But God answers those ‘feeling small’ prayers.

He answered in two ways. One was a dear friend’s recommendation and the other was a ‘chance’ meeting on a plane. Two men, two identical recommendations, one a Bible-study leader and the other and Elder at a PCA church, “You should check out Karl Barth.”

So I ordered a book and watched the tracking number like a freakin’ hawk. And I’m terribly glad I did.

“Let their peace be their disquiet and their disquiet be their peace.”

“He who knows the world to be bounded by a truth (the gospel) that contradicts it; he who knows himself to be bounded by a will that contradicts him; he who, knowing too well that he must be satisfied to live with this contradiction and not attempt to escape from it, finds it hard to kick against the pricks; he who finally makes open confession of the contradiction and determines to base his life upon it – he it is that believes.”

“Jesus Christ our Lord. This is the gospel and the meaning of history.”