I made it to the first three London Men’s conventions, but sadly missed the last two. However, it is in the Easter holidays for me this year so may be able to make it…
Archive for December, 2007
What about 2008?
So what lies in store for 2008… well no new years resolutions, except maybe one, if I get my act together I may try and do the McCheyne Bible reading plan, but what’s happening in 2008…?
Hugh is 22. Mission at the end of January.
New Word Alive!!
Finish my degree hopefully…
Weddings – at least 3
Some conferences… Kent Hughes at EMA? Mark Driscoll in Brighton? David Cook at Keswick?
Colwyn Bay 3 – love it!
Lots of reading – have lots of books I want to read
Get a job! – I dunno what I’m doing after university yet
Could be quite a fun and exciting year… lets hope so!
A bit of TK
I do like a bit of TK (Tim Keller), as does Povey, who is officially a TK-geek. As it happens, Mark Driscoll is also a TK-geek, stating in one of his sermons that he rips most of his material from TK – in other news Driscoll joined Facebook last week, over 1000 friends already, most of whom, like me have never met him.
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed TK at EMA and listen to a bit of his stuff every now and then. Although the one thing that does annoy me is that most of his sermons cost money, not cheap either! But one free one, a good one is available at BeThinking on the subject of exclusivity and other religions and worldviews, he’s great at analysing and deconstructing worldviews.
Exciting news for TK fans, he’s written a book! The book is titled ‘The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Scepticism’ , and I’m guessing picks up some of the same of the same themes as the BeThinking talk. You can read a bit more about it on the Redeemer website, he has a little page called ‘Yes, I wrote a book‘. It’s released on the 14th February and will cost £12 on Amazon, although the cover looks pretty bad, looks like it’s been published by Banner!
Another book that caught my attention recently was Lesslie Newbign’s ‘The Gospel in a Pluralist Society’, after it was recommended by both Driscoll and Keller, who I would regard as being two of the key thinkers on what you might call Reformission, so I think I shall try and get myself a copy some time.
Chairs
Had the privilege of playing a truly awesome game the other day… imagine playing Jenga in reverse, then replace the wooden blocks with small plastic chairs, and you have the game of chairs. It is genius, and highly addictive. Not to mention shuffle-board, old school, but good fun!
Gone are the days when my family would humour me and play charades and pictionary with me, gone too are the days when I had the desire to play these games. Sad times.
I had a look for this game on the net and it looks like it’s completely sold out – hopefully some new stock will arrive for the new year.
Gifts
Despite saying that I didn’t need anything for Christmas (except a Saviour) some kind people (my family) did get me some presents… plenty of reading and DVDage to go. I have a couple of talks to do at church on a series on James later in 2008, so I’m hoping Dougie Moo will be helpful.
My greatest need
I’m a bit of a Scrooge at this time of year, all the relatives ask me what I want for Christmas, and I have to think what I could buy the family for Christmas… friends are easy, I just don’t bother! So this year I decided I didn’t really need or want anything, so I just asked for books (on the basis that they last a lifetime) or gift vouchers (on the basis that I could get things I might need at a later date).
But at this time I am more concious than ever of my greatest need is a Saviour. Ever since Genesis 3 that’s been my greatest need, ever since I was conscious of my actions it’s been my greatest need. Sometimes I just have to cry out Paul’s words of struggle in Romans 7, ending of course with hope – “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Throughout the Bible God’s people are longing, waiting for a saviour, and what a joy Christmas is to celebrate the coming of the Saviour… Luke 2:11 “Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”
A look back at 2007
This is the point of the year where proper bloggers like Bish and Adrian write several posts about their blogging years with links back to lots of cool previous posts… although in this new WordPress blog I’ve only really been blogging properly since the summer so there’s not much to refer back to… but here’s a few highlights, well actually when you go through it, my life is surprisingly uneventful:
January
New Year in the Shire. I turned 21. We had a mission week at Sussex (Reality07).
February
Stopping the Traffik. February is a blur…
March
Obviously a quiet month… or just another blur?
April
Word Alive – Mike Reeves on the Trinity, Charles Price on Philippians.
May
Richard Beeston acoustic set. Exams. Revision at the cricket ground.
June
Keller at EMA on what it means to be an Evangelical, Vaughan Roberts on Daniel.
July
Keswick, Alec Motyer on Exodus, John Stott on Christlikeness, Simon Manchester on Jonah. Driscol – Radical Reformission.
August
Colwyn Bay 3 – supremacy of Christ in Colossians. Cricket action, two 5-wicket hauls this season.
September
Resits – no Forum again, gutted. More Driscoll, Confessions of a Reformission Rev. Touring Europe with mates- Prague, Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna. Business of freshers week.
October
Welcome to 3rd year. UCCF sharing the love on the South-coast. Driscoll on Philippians.
November
Met a nice girl from Wales. CU Houseparty, more Philippians. More Colossians at church. Church weekend, Leviticus.
December
CB3 reunited. Crying. Adrian Plass at Sussex carol service. Back Home. Final year project. Christmas shopping and all that.
The Enemy Within
Well for whatever reason, possibly deadlines it took me quite a while to read this, but that wasn’t so bad,it’s a book that you can read one chapter each week without losing an idea of what’s going on, each chapter being a little shot of good stuff every now and then. The author Kris Lundgaard, has taken the best bits from John Owen’s writing on sin, temptation and defeating it. It’s packed with loads of gems and little nuggets of gold in talking frankly about sin. The book is split into 4 chapters but really has two main themes; 1) analysing the nature and power of Sin and its tactics to tempt and deceive, and 2) biblical, prayerful, and thoroughly practical strategies for defeating sin. Each chapter ends with some questions which really help to focus thinking on what’s being discussed- would make a great small/prayer/accountability group study. Very helpful and practical, easy to read. Good stuff.
Limited Atonement
It’s been a while, but time to resume the series of posts looking at TULIP, and we come to the issue of Atonement. There seems to be two ways to argue this, logically inferring from the Bible, and explicitly from the Bible text… (some links first)
Mark Driscoll – Unlimited Limited Atonement
John Piper – “For whom did Jesus taste death?” (Heb 2:9)
Carl Chambers – “Are there Few that be saved?”
Doug Wilson – “Definite Atonement”
Logic…
So… if Christ died for the sins of everyone (made atonement for those sins), then everyone will stand before God with a ‘not-guilty’ verdict – their sins have all been paid for, so they stand justified before God…
…which means everyone goes to heaven… you see there can’t be a hell, who would go there? Any concept of hell would then be completely unjust, God would punish all sin on the cross, and then punish some again in hell.
Now some would reject this anyway, even some might dare to call themselves evangelical and reject hell. The Bible, indeed Jesus speaks very clearly and plainly about the reality of hell, the present and future judgement of God.
Bible…
In the Driscoll sermon above he does this amusing performance of how all the Arminians take the verses that say “Christ died for… ALL, EVERYONE”, and how the Calvinists quote the verses that say “Christ died for… MANY, SOME”. It’s funny, but it’s true, we always take the verses that prove our point… rather we should take scripture as a whole all the verses in one big pile.
Driscoll argues that in some respects Christ died for all, because all experience a blessing from the atonement, what we might call God’s Common Grace to all… but, that in a saving way, in actually atoning for the sin of the individual, Christ died for some, for the elect. That’s how he reconciles, the ALL and the SOME. I don’t know, but it’s the best answer I’ve heard for truly reconciling these two ideas of ‘who’ Jesus died for.
Why I don’t like Limited Atonement……because it makes the cross sound weak, as though the sacrifice of Christ wasn’t quite enough to do the job… the synonym ‘Particular Redemption’ is perhaps better?
Why it doesn’t actually matter…
I would say, there is a ‘Universal Call’ on all people to come to the Cross of Christ for redemption, and the Bible is clear that anyone who comes to Jesus for forgiveness will be saved, their sin has been atoned for. But, the atonement of sins is still limited to those who confess Christ (see logic), this is still true regardless of whether we accept the second point of the TULIP, that human beings are Unconditionally Elected to receive that atonement for their sins. Whether it’s Election or God’s foreknowledge of our choices, or even a blatant heresy of God not knowing the future – the atonement of sins is only effective for those who trust in Jesus.
So What?
Judgement is real, the wages of sin is death, but for those who trust Jesus, He became their sin so that they could become the righteousness of God. But it’s easy to get bogged down in the arguments of who did Jesus die for, who are the elect, who will be saved? Perhaps these quotes are helpful…
Charles Spurgeon says “Lord call out your elect. Then elect some more”
Stephen Nowak says “I can’t lift up people’s shirts to see if they have ‘elect’ written on them! I’m just called to preach the gospel”
The bottom line is God is in control of the whole history of salvation, he knows the end right from the beginning, and he’s called Christians to be his ambassadors, his messengers to bring the gospel, the news of Christ’s atoning sacrifice on the cross to all people, everywhere.
Why I abhor living history!
I went to the Mecca of shopping today, the temple to consumerism that is Bluewater. Firstly I hate that experience, because I go past all the designer shops and it just rubs in the fact that I’m a student with no money…
But anyway, there was also 3 people dressed up to advertise a Christmas market, in Dickensian dress; a town crier, a chimney sweep and a woman with a protruding-hip dress. Now I’m trying to answer the question in my own mind of why I hate this kind of so-called ‘living history’ so much…? I can’t quite figure it out, I probably had a bad experience as a child at some stupid museum. It’s not the dressing up so much, or the idea of recreating history, but the fact that these ‘actors’ feel the need to interact with the general public, it’s just embarrassing for all concerned. Fortunately I avoided contact today, but only through the use of well practised skills of aversion which I shall now share…
- Be prepared. Certain places like museums, shopping centres, tourist attractions etc. will likely have something like this going on.
- Look ahead. These characters are usually highly visible and very vocal, they shouldn’t be too hard to spot, so keep an eye out for them.
- Spot your escape route. Often these people place themselves in bottlenecks where you can’t not avoid them, try and get objects or other people between them and you as you walk past.
- Block the senses. Look the other way, start a conversation, pretend you’re deaf… whatever you do, don’t make eye contact or show any other sign of acknowledging their presence!
Also… why would women in shopping centres try and sell me beauty products, what possible use could I have for hand lotions and nail filing blocks?!
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