CTV.ca | Multiple bodies found in Victoria, B.C. home: “Multiple bodies found in Victoria, B.C. home”

Not good. Just heard it on the news… Nobody we know, I don’t think, but certainly shocking for sleepy Victoria.

While readying myself to launch a new series in the book of Romans, I am taking a few weeks preaching some material from a book by Wayne Mack, A Homework Manual for Biblical Living, vol. 2. The outline is called “God’s way of Bringing Up Children”. I am essentially stealing the outline, filling it out and personalizing it, and broadening the application to making disciples of any age, including raising children.

The first message in this mini-series was entitled “Pass It On“, taking its theme from the word ‘paideia’ in Eph 6.4 and its text as Dt 6. In this message I focussed on the “How?” of making disciples by answering: by personal integrity in instruction. Dt 6 calls on the nation Israel to love the Lord with all their hearts, and then to instruct their children. Thus the application for discipleship is first of all to be a disciple yourself. Make God the center of your life. While doing so, instruct diligently [while walking, sitting, lying down and rising, i.e., as a natural outflow of every aspect of your life], with a wary eye cast on your surroundings and your attitude lest you stumble in your own discipleship, and to instruct patiently, as your sons come to you with many questions. To sum up this ‘how’ of discipleship, it means to instruct by personal spiritual integrity, by diligent public expression, and by purposeful preparation. [Come to think of it, that last sentence would have made a good outline. If you check my outline linked above, you will see that I was aiming for that outline, but didn’t quite express it that way.]

In our afternoon service, we celebrated our monthly communion service. I preached the second message in a new communion series (begun last month) from Leviticus. I didn’t post a link to last month’s message: An Acceptable Sacrifice, so there it is. This month, our message came from the same chapter, with the title: An Offering Made by Fire. I emphasized four ideas from the burnt offering with this message: Finding acceptance of offering and offeror [peace with God under God’s terms]; Propitiating God’s wrath with an offering of a ‘sweet savour’ [found in the complete destruction of the offering]; Atoning for the sins of the worshipper by the payment of a ransom; and Substituting the victim for the person of the worshipper, making fellowship with God possible.

There are many instructive ideas for our fellowship with God to be found in the Law. It is well worth study and contemplation. It can be very sobering, as we consider the full implications of bloody sacrifice.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

Human-animal embryo study wins approval | Science | The Guardian: “Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are expected to be approved tomorrow by the government’s fertility regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published its long-awaited public consultation on the controversial research yesterday, revealing that a majority of people were ‘at ease’ with scientists creating the hybrid embryos.”

Since a majority is ‘at ease’ … we need seek no higher standard, eh?

I follow a blog by Michael A. G. Haykin. He is extremely Calvinistic, but seems to have a very good understanding of history. As such he is interesting to read.

Today he posts on the reasons for his move from the Toronto Baptist Seminary (where he has been Principal for the last four years) to Southern Seminary in Louisville. TBS is the school founded by T. T. Shields, housed in the Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto. TBS would certainly have been in the fundamentalist orbit in the past, I don’t think one would consider it such today.

Dr. Haykin in his post offers these words as an assessment of the situation of orthodox Christianity in Canada, and I don’t think he has in view the positions of fundamentalists, but rather of the more conservative Baptists in Canada.

Historia Ecclesiastica: “Thinking of a move, as I have noted above, has not been easy. I love Ontario and I know, after twenty-five years of teaching in this province, the great need we have for solid theological education. In a word, the churches need a school that is deeply committed to orthodoxy, yet fully in touch with the culture. Not an easy thing to be.

“All too often, it is one or the other: conversant with the culture and out of step with Scriptural realities, or rooted in biblical orthodoxy but fighting old battles that most people no longer remember. As Luther is reported to have once said: if we are fighting and skirmishing where the enemy is not attacking, we are failing to truly fight the war.

“And more than ever I believe we need to be committed to networking and the need to labour alongside those who stand for the same core truths that we love. The absolute independency that some in this province prize is, in my opinion, the high road to impotency. To be sure, if we need to stand alone when others are caving in to theological error and the passing fads of theologia, then stand alone we must. Dare to be a Daniel, as we have long sung. But all too often this translates into a pettiness and a refusal to work with others unless they see utterly everything our way. Without sacrificing theological integrity we need to find essentially like-minded brothers and sisters and labour side by side.“

These sentiments seem to me to be something of what Bob Bixby calls ‘the emerging middle‘. There is this anxious desire for something of a less contentious, but still orthodox theological position. It is the viewpoint of the ‘young fundamentalist’.

The tension between being ‘deeply committed to orthodoxy, yet fully in touch with the culture’ is the evangelical proposition. This IS the issue between fundamentalism and evangelicalism in the 1950s and continues to be the issue today. The evangelical answer to the question is to stand on the ‘in touch with culture’ side of the divide and the fundamentalist answer is to stand on the ‘a pox on culture’ side of the divide.

Dr. Haykin rightly observes the dangers of both answers. On the one hand is to be so culturally ‘hip’ that truth, Christ, and Scripture are left by the wayside, with nods of appreciation and protestations of loyalty. On the other hand is the danger of a descent into another world, where petty personal issues become the crusades of the day.

There are Christians on both sides of the question who don’t fall into the traps their answers risk. I don’t think anyone would seriously question the doctrinal orthodoxy of the current crop of conservative evangelicals the young fundamentalists love so much. That would mean men like Mohler, Dever, MacArthur et al. At the same time, there are men who answer the dividing question with fundamentalist answers. Their orthodoxy is unquestioned, of course, and there is some concession by the young fundamentalist that these, at least, have not strayed into the realm total cultural irrelevancy or descended (too deeply) into petty divisions. In this category we would find names like Bauder and Doran, perhaps.

Those who advocate for the ’emerging middle’ seem to think that parties on both sides of this divide are changing and a new reality is emerging. I don’t see that happening at all. The divide remains. Those answering the question as evangelicals are committed to the evangelical answer to the question.

A change, nevertheless, is occurring. The change is among those wearing the fundamentalist label. Many among them (many of them young, hence the term) are changing their answer to the dividing question. The evangelicals remain evangelicals still. There is still a tendency to make some kinds of concessions to outsiders (more liberal Christians or even the world) in order to remain ‘in touch’ with culture.

You can find examples of these concessions in many evangelical commentaries. They make nuanced statements on some areas of orthodoxy to show that they ‘get it’ and are not so dogmatic as to insist, for example, that John wrote the gospel of John, or that it is possible that Moses’ mother was a woman of exceedingly advanced age before she had children. In discussing the ‘saints’ of this age, they are willing to concede that the works of unbelievers should be ‘admired on their own merits’, all the while criticising their false doctrine. [See this blog by Rick Phillips on Mother Teresa for an example.]

The emerging middle is not a middle. It is a change by those formerly associated with fundamentalism towards evangelicalism. In time, it will be simply that. Fundamentalism will be abandoned, evangelicalism embraced. Those heading in that direction expect fundamentalism to be shattered by these changes, I suspect.

For myself, I really am not all that interested in being ‘in touch with culture’. The culture of this world has nothing to offer in terms of spiritual value. I think we should understand culture in order to understand people, but we should be preaching against the corrosive influence of culture that deadens the soul to spiritual things and we should be calling people out of the culture of this age into a true discipleship of Jesus Christ.

May God grant us the wisdom to do just that.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

I have been thinking about this article for the last couple of days:

Cyber Sexuality – Newsletter – ChristianityTodayLibrary.com: “According to Dr. Mark Laaser, director of the Christian Alliance for Sexual Recovery, ‘Historically we would have said women are addicted to romance novels or women are addicted to chat rooms,’ but that’s changing. The number of women hooked on pornography and other ‘more behavioral ways of acting out’ are dramatically rising. Our culture and what we spend our time thinking about are literally changing the way our brains are wired. As a result ‘women are getting rewired to be more visual and aggressive’ and they’re ‘acting out in direct ways.’

This rewiring—which happens in men as well—is changing us neurochemically and neuroanatomically, says Dr. Laaser. And it’s not only through repeated exposure to sexual imagery on TV, in advertising, or online. The primary agent of this mental transformation is due to how we use our minds: what we spend our time thinking about, fantasizing about, and meditating on. Our brains and thoughts are molded by what we surf for, how we chat, and what we write. This negative transformation is the diametric opposite (and dramatic fulfillment) of the principles found in Romans 12:1-2.”

The thing you meditate on tends to dominate your value system and way of life. This article is a negative example of how crucial it is to spend a great deal of time reading and thinking about God’s Word.

The last two years our church spent a good deal of time reading the Bible through. All our sermons were geared to preaching the Bible through. The whole experience lifted the spiritual lives of those committed to the project. (Not all were!)

I was talking about this article and this concept with a visiting pastor friend this week. It occurred to me as we talked how difficult it is to by faith make the focus of your mind the Word of God. God’s Word, while interesting enough to me as a Christian, doesn’t have the sizzle that the world offers to my flesh. The CT article referenced here focuses on illicit and explicit sexuality – an area of huge attraction to the flesh. But there are many other ‘sizzling’ attractions to the flesh in the world besides this particular topic. Consider the sporting world, the fashion world, the music world, and so on. Consider even dry topics like history or genealogical studies — I have a distant cousin who is obsessed with our family tree. Through her efforts I know my family history back to 1550. But this woman cannot hear the gospel because she is obsessed with “Johnson”.

The Word of God, on the other hand, can seem dryer than dry. It can seem that nothing is happening as I read it faithfully day by day. Some days I can’t bring myself to it. That is when faith must act. I look at the Word by faith and I put my time into reading, thinking, absorbing, meditating – and a transformation takes place. This is faith, not sight. And that faith can’t be mere words, it must be faithful action or a spiritual vacuum takes place. And where there is a vacuum, other things rush in to take God’s rightful place in our lives.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

This must be my day for commenting on cool stories on the internet… just one more…

Tiny tablet provides proof for Old Testament – Telegraph: “‘This is a fantastic discovery, a world-class find,’ Dr Finkel said yesterday. ‘If Nebo-Sarsekim existed, which other lesser figures in the Old Testament existed? A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power.'”

Read the whole article to get the details, but the gist is this: in searching through financial records from the Babylonian empire, a researcher discovered a clay tablet containing the name of Nebuzaradan, a man whose name appears in 12 verses in Jeremiah. The man is a relatively minor player in the destruction of Jerusalem, a man into whose custody Jeremiah was committed by Nebuchadnezzar.

The tablet discovered in the British Museum is a receipt given to Nebuzaradan from a pagan temple in Babylon. The name is the same, though spelled differently in Cuneiform than Hebrew, and the tablet identifies the man as the ‘chief eunuch’, a man in the service of the emperor. It is undoubtedly the same man as named in Jeremiah.

In this minor detail, Jeremiah is seen to be accurate. This speaks volumes for the accuracy of Jeremiah, and by extension, the whole Bible.

Of course, believers have no need of archeology to confirm faith, but it is satisfying to have examples like this to point out to unbelievers. The credibility of the Bible in an unbelieving world takes on additional power when finds such as this are made.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Diamond star thrills astronomers: “Twinkling in the sky is a diamond star of 10 billion trillion trillion carats, astronomers have discovered. The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. It’s the compressed heart of an old star that was once bright like our Sun but has since faded and shrunk. Astronomers have decided to call the star ‘Lucy’ after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

What a mighty God we serve!

Job 22:12 Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are! 13 And thou sayest, How doth God know? can he judge through the dark cloud?

Psalm 8:1 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens. 2 Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. 3 When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. 6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: 7 All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; 8 The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. 9 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

These comments on Canada’s alleged public education system:

No student left behind: “‘What it really is, is about passing the buck,’ said Anton Allahar, a professor of sociology at the University of Western Ontario. ‘In a system where one is not accountable you pass them on to the next level, from Grade 3 to Grade 4 or from first year, to second year, to third year, so that somebody else later on down the line someone else inherits the problem.’

In their recent book Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis, Prof. Allahar and his colleague James Cote lay significant blame for the current state of affairs at the feet of a public education system they say is breeding ’empowered idiots.’

‘This idea of boosting self-esteem of students, especially those who don’t do well, has led to problems at primary, secondary and university educational levels where you have people who don’t aspire to do well, but still expect the star,’ said Prof. Allahar in an interview.

‘They still expect the reward and they still expect mommy and daddy and teacher to say, ‘Way to go! You gave it your best!’ But they are not giving it at their best. So what people like Jim Cote and I have inherited at the university level is a lot of people with very high self-esteem who are idiots.'”

Sigh…

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

That would be our Lord Jesus Christ. Today I preached an additional message in our Law, Legalism, and Life series as suggested last week by my sister.

The Spiritual Life of Jesus Christ: an exhortation to put on Jesus Christ with Rm 13.14 as its text was our message. I began the message by noting that our ultimate standard for Christian living is our Lord Jesus Christ himself.

When we think of Jesus as our standard, what aspect of his nature comes to mind? Usually I think of Jesus as God – it is a little jarring to think of him in terms of who he is, the God-MAN. Current heresies tend to deny his deity, so we tend to think of him that way in a reactionary defensive kind of mode. In the early centuries of the church, the heretics tended to deny his humanity in some way, in keeping with the Greek/Gnostic notion of the material world being evil.

But when we are urged to ‘put on the Lord Jesus Christ’, what are we being asked to do? Are we being asked to imitate Christ as God? How can we do that? No, we are being asked to emulate and imitate his perfect humanity.

Proposition: To fully live up to Biblical Christian standards, the eyes of your spirit must be focused on following the pattern of the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ.

What kind of spiritual life did Jesus exhibit?

In the life of Christ we see that Jesus practiced what he preached – true spirituality. The one who exhorted us to love our enemies healed Malchus’ ear. The one who told us to turn the other cheek answered not again when falsely accused before Pilate. The Lord Jesus could have called 10,000 angels but denied himself, submitted to the will of the Father, endured the abuse of men, ‘as a sheep before her shearers is dumb’. Jesus is the perfect example of spiritual humanity. How was that spirituality developed? Simply by the self-consciously divine nature of God in Christ? Or simply by that nature alone?

We find him persistently praying. His prayers were such that they moved the disciples (men who had heard prayers and been offering prayers all their lives) to ask Jesus to teach them to pray. We find Jesus habitually and persistently in the synagogues. Luke says it was his custom. It is mentioned so much in the Gospels that I think not a sabbath went by that the Lord was not in a synagogue somewhere. Do you realize that synagogue worship is not required by the OT Law? It isn’t even on the radar screen in the OT. Jesus was in the synagogue because he loved God.

How did Jesus come to this kind of spirituality?

It is undeniable that Jesus grew physically – he was a babe, a child, a boy, and then a man. It is undeniable that he grew mentally (and that to some extent he limited his omniscience as the Son of man as a part of the mystery of the incarnation). We see him seated at the feet of the doctors of the law in the temple, a 12 year old boy, ‘listening and asking questions’ – he is growing mentally.

An often overlooked facet of Jesus life is that he grew spiritually. As a babe, he was cared for and led by devout human parents who consistently kept the Law. On the eighth day he was circumcised, in accordance with the law. On the 40th day he was redeemed as a firstborn, in accordance with the law. On the same day his mother was purified by offering two turtledoves, in accordance with the law. His parents both persistently attended the Passover every year (though it was only required of men). When discovered by his parents in the temple, he returned home with them and ‘was subject’ unto them. Jesus was the perfect model of humanity, growing spiritually each step of the way in his life. The Bible tells us that the child grew in wisdom and grace (Lk 2.40, 52). What is that but spiritual growth?

Jesus is of course on a higher spiritual plane than his parents. John the Baptist considered himself to be unworthy to stoop and loose Jesus shoes, the Lord’s parents were certainly not higher than the Baptist. Yet Jesus submitted himself to their authority, obeyed their leadership, observed their rules and the rules of his religion (Judaism) and beyond.

Are you a Christian? Do you want to be like Christ?

Then you need to emulate his spiritual life. That’s how you are going to put on Christ.

• Prayers
• Bible reading, memorizing, study
• Faithfulness to the assembly — really, you should be in every service
• Commitment to membership [accountability and service]

Proposition: To fully live up to Biblical Christian standards, the eyes of your spirit must be focused on following the pattern of the perfect humanity of Jesus Christ.

~~~

In our afternoon service we began a new series on the nature of the Church. The message was It’s Not Your Church

Our text was Mt 16.18. We looked at the foundation of the church: Jesus the Christ, the Son of God. We looked at the formation of the church: Jesus Christ, the builder. We looked at the future of the church: victorious over the gates of hell [from the cross onwards to the coming of the King, the grave is no victory over the saints, the Lord is the victory].

If It’s Not Your Church, then whose is it? It’s His church. The church belongs to the One who builds it. He may use men and the gifts he gives them to build the church, but ultimately, he is the one at work, he is the one who builds.

Our attitude towards His church should be one of submission. Submission for accountability and discipleship. Submission for opportunities to serve.

~~~

We had a number of visitors today, mostly from out of town. We also had a couple of absences today, so we were about average in attendance after all.

I did experience a ‘first’ for me in preaching the first message. I got about three quarters through and discovered a page of my notes was missing. I had to have some of my people look up a verse for me with their concordances while I was preaching. I managed to remember most of the notes on the page and with the help of our people, carried on. I have forgotten my whole set of notes a couple of times before, but that one was a first!

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

I have a clip from a message preached in 1991 called “Gray-Area Decisions Made Easy”. The bulk of the message contains reasonable decision making questions Christians should ask about whether they should do or not do something. The subject matter is what the preacher calls ‘non-moral’ things, but things about which Christians have had questions throughout the history of the church.

I don’t agree with some of the interpretations offered in the message. The preacher misses some key passages quite badly. However, as a whole the thrust of the message is reasonably biblical.

Much more than these errors of interpretation, the thing that bothers me most about the message is a statement made in the introduction. I don’t know if this will work, but I am including a link to a 27 second clip from that introduction. Below is my transcript of the clip. I think it is accurate:

“I went away to college at a very narrow kind of circumscribed legalistic school and everything was reduced to rules. We had rules for everything. In fact we used to say the school song was ‘I don’t smoke and I don’t chew and I don’t go with girls that do.’ That sort of summed up the whole approach to spiritual life. Everything was reduced to some kind of list of things that were forbidden.”

I, too, went away to that same college. I, too, had to sign the same rule book. But I find it extremely disingenuous for the speaker to suggest that the leadership at that college thought then (or even still think today) that spirituality equalled keeping the man-made rule book of the college. What a foolish and uncharitable misrepresentation! When I was a student there, no one assumed that the student who didn’t break the rules was spiritual. Keeping the rules was one thing, spirituality something else again.

Even more disturbing to me is this question: What does such a distortion say about the credibility of the one speaking?

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

P.S. Yes, I know the clip is from 1991. Would anyone care to confirm a change of attitude in the intervening years?