The DesiringGod Blog has posted a new video using a mix from 1031sermonjams.
Philippians 3:7-8 (NIV) “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ”
Watch it.
I received official word today that I can forget all of my German. While I’m still an expert, I thought I would pass on my wisdom concerning the language. Actually, it does not take a whole lot to be able to confidently read the latest spam.
First, those capital letters all over the place. Capitalized words are nouns.
Second, German has only four strange characters, and only one of those is really strange: ä ö ü ß. The last is the only one that will throw you off, but it is the equivalent of a double-s (ss). Sometimes words use an ess-tsett (ß) and sometimes they use a “ss”.
Third, German has a lot of cognate words, that is, words that look and mean something very similar to their English counterparts. What this means is that when you see a German Text, don’t immediately act like it’s Greiche, because you probably know about 20% of the Worte.
Fourth, translation websites are still pretty lousy, at least for the few examples I tried. But if you do use one for German, it will help you to know that in German the verbs are often at the end of the sentence. In fact, here’s a helpful way to read German: get the definitions of all the words and then re-arrange them into an order that makes sense.
Fifth, a good free downloadable German-English dictionary is QuickDic. A good website to learn conversational German is the BBC website.
I’ve never taken a summer school class in my life as far as I can remember. Now I’m taking two. German class is getting close to conclusion, and this week I’m auditing a course on Messianic Prophecy, M-F 8-5.
While I’m in class, my friend Danny is spending his life in the library (which happens to be one of the 50 strangest buildings in the world – see #48), and he came across this nugget in a published book. This quotation is reproduced exactly as in the original. The subject is the land of the Philistines.
"This identification is, for some of the five locations proposed, still indoubt while the intensification of excavations in that area produces new pieces of information that contribute to define a picture of the events that brought to the occupation, in the areas in question and in a leading position, of a population that at the end of the the Late Bronze Age, had had three sporadic visits before settlement at the beginning of the Iron Age."
If I’m a rock star and you ‘re one of the screaming fans in the front row, you ‘ll want to rush out to the newsstand and pick up the latest copy of Rolling Stone Adult Bible Studies Illustrated (Summer 2009). A five-page article features an interview with me and enough photos of the photographer to make the most devoted of you to swoon (ok, that would be my wife). The issue is for sale here.
Yesterday I finished a year and three months of teaching through 1 Samuel with a lesson on the book as a whole. I summarized the message of 1-2 Samuel with this single statement:
The kingship of Israel is established by God through the prophet Samuel by an everlasting covenant with the house of David.
Should you care to listen to the 30-minute Sunday School lesson, you can download it here. I wouldn’t recommend listening to it near bedtime.
25 Golden Rules of E-Mail. Most of these are good and worth following. #7 and #8 are my pet peeves (in the circles I’m in, the problem is less with angry emails (#19) than it is with emailing my address to everyone they’ve ever met). #23 is brilliant: declare "e-mail bankruptcy" once in a while. Alas, I don’t think I can live with that guilt. But it’s a new fantasy I can occasionally indulge in.
The Onion tells you how you can work less by outsourcing your own job.
How has the world changed in the last 200 years in terms of life expectancy and average income? Gapminder has put the data together in a fascinating video that shows the trends by country by year (4 min.)
The Kindle 3 is going to make reading a whole lot easier.
The world of biblical studies is, unfortunately, not filled by people seeking to do God’s will for God’s glory. What is most disappointing to me is to see this among evangelicals. This is not a new problem, as illustrated by this letter by John Newton (1725-1807), circulated by GraceGems.
Dear friend,
I truly pity those who rise early and study late—with no higher prize and prospect in view, than the obtaining of academic honors! Such pursuits will before long appear (as they really are) as vain as the foolish games of children! May the Lord impress them with the noble ambition of living to and for Him. If these scholars, who are laboring for pebbles under the semblance of goodly pearls, had a discovery of the Pearl of great price—how quickly and gladly would they lay down their admired attainments, and become fools—that they might be truly wise! Their academic studies, if taken in the aggregate, are little better than splendid trifles!
Friend, what a snare have you escaped! You would have been nothing but a scholar—had not God visited your heart and enlightened you by His grace! Now I trust you account your former academic gains, but loss—compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus. What you have attained in the way of learning, will be useful to you—if sanctified, and chiefly so by the knowledge which you have of its insufficiency to any valuable purpose in the great concerns of life—knowing God and walking with Him!
You can spend all your life studying, teaching, and writing about the Bible and yet have wasted your life.
A professor at Southeastern Seminary has struggled with the “Danger of Seeking the Acclaim of the Academy” and gives some specific counsel in that regard.
This brings to mind Eta Linnemann, considered by the guild to be a first-rate New Testament scholar. Yet when she was saved, she recognized that her scholarship was all rubbish. She passed away a couple of weeks ago, but as her very existence was a stinging rebuke to so many who consider themselves religious, some notices of her passing were less than kind. She is, no doubt, now receiving the praise of her heavenly Father, which far surpasses the highest accolades of man.
If you know much about Chronicles (or the Bible in general), you know that obedience brings blessing and disobedience brings punishment. That theme is in every chapter of the 65 chapters of Chronicles. It’s repeated so much, you might be forgiven for growing tired of it. Apply that to your life and you realize that when you lose your job, your medical insurance premium jumps, or your children are incorrigible that it must be God’s punishment for your disobedience.
Not so fast. Watch this:
Hezekiah “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” Hezekiah cleansed the temple, commanded the people to be consecrated, rose early to make a huge sacrifice, called the people to worship, rejoiced in the Lord, called the apostate northerners to repentance, prayed on behalf of the people for forgiveness, led the nation in the greatest Passover celebration “since the time of Solomon,” presided over the destruction of idols, gave a huge contribution to the temple, and more. It sums it up with this comment “every work that he undertook in the service of the house of God and in accordance with the law and the commandments, seeking his God, he did with all his heart, and prospered” (2 Chr 29:1–31:21).
What do you expect next? How about a long list of good things that God did for Hezekiah because of his faithful obedience? We see this with plenty of other good kings.
Here’s what it actually says next:
2 Chronicles 32:1 (ESV) “After these things and these acts of faithfulness, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and invaded Judah and encamped against the fortified cities, thinking to win them for himself.”
What’s going on? This is not what Hezekiah deserves. Why does God do this?
If you read the chapter, I suggest that you ‘ll find two reasons:
1. These devastating circumstances forced Hezekiah to trust God. It’s easy to trust God when everyone is wealthy and at peace. Invasion tests that faith, and finds its limits. How did Hezekiah do? He trusted God, and his example caused the people to trust God (see verses 6-11, 31).
2. God wanted to show himself glorious. He did this not by defeating a wimpy army a thousand miles from home, but by taking on the undefeated world superpower at Jerusalem’s doorstep. God is big enough for that, but you don’t know it if he doesn’t show you every once in a while.
Application: your situation may be the result of your sin. It may also be because of your faithfulness, as God desires that you trust him more and watch him handle what you cannot.
What does this mean?
Isaiah 27:6 (ESV) “In days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit.”
You can read the context (Isaiah 27:1-13), but you ‘ll see that like other places in Isaiah, this is a brief word of hope in the midst of words of judgment. That makes it easier then, as this is a short passage to analyze. What is it talking about?
The time: the reference here is the “days to come” (or, more literally, “the coming ones.”) Isaiah is speaking about something that is in his future.
The subject: the two subjects are of course one, as Israel is another name for Jacob. Both are used not only for the individual, but after his passing, the nation of his descendants. This seems rather simple and straightforward, and it is. But because of the time (the future) and the predicate (see below), many Bible readers feel that they must say that Israel is not Israel and Jacob is not Jacob.
The event: This is clearly a metaphor. Don’t allow dispensationalist-bashers (and there are many) to fool you into thinking that dispensationalists take everything literally, thereby denying figurative language. That is a straw man argument. Proper interpretation understands figurative language figuratively and literal language literally. When dispensationalist-bashers say that we ‘re taking figurative language literally, what is really happening is that they are taking literal language figuratively. This is not to deny that there are cases that are difficult to determine. But it’s the easy cases that are the point of departure and not the difficult ones.
The people of Israel are obviously not going to start sprouting branches out of their ears and hips. This is a picture of the nation’s 1) firm establishment (“take root”), 2) manifestation of life (“shall blossom and put forth shoots”), and 3) worldwide fruitfulness (“fill the whole world with fruit”). Is Isaiah speaking about the nation from an economic standpoint or from a spiritual standpoint or both? He doesn’t say here, but it’s not too hard to figure it out from other prophecies made by Isaiah and his colleagues.
As you know, I’m concerned about the fulfillment of prophecies in Scripture. So I ask, has this been fulfilled already? Is this a conditional prophecy, and might it have been revoked in the past because of Israel’s failure? If it is yet to occur, what will it look like? I can think of three general approaches to interpreting this passage:
1. Isaiah spoke to encourage the Israelites. He did not know the future, but he assumed that God would do good things for Israel. We shouldn’t insist on finding fulfillment in the details.
2. Israel as a nation failed, but Jesus Christ (a descendant of Israel) is the new Israel and he is presently fulfilling this. Think of the “mustard seed” that becomes a tree (Matt 13:31-32).
3. Israel was failing when Isaiah spoke. They were anything but established in the land as the exile had already started (in 733 BC by the Assyrians). They were largely lifeless and rotting. Instead of sending fruit into the world for others, they were bringing the world’s fruit into their dining rooms and feasting. Isaiah predicted that this would be reversed and that Israel would be returned from exile (see a few verses down in Isaiah 27:12-13). The people would be alive like buds in springtime, and their productivity would cover the earth’s surface.
The problem with approach #1 is that it doesn’t make any sense. Why would Isaiah encourage a wicked people unless God led him to? What sign did he see that there was any hope? If Isaiah was merely making assumptions, he was making some stupid ones. The only reason why we can even read Isaiah today is because #1 is not true and God faithfully preserved his people according to his promises.
#2 is partly true. Israel’s restoration could not occur apart from the faithful obedience of Jesus Christ. This was a necessary condition, and I agree with all of my non-dispensational brothers that Jesus’s sacrifice which gives life and establishes the new covenant is indeed most glorious. The problem is that they have substituted the cause for the effect. Because of Jesus, Jacob will fill the whole earth with fruit. This passage does not say that Jesus shall take root and the Gentiles shall fill the earth with fruit. The hope is for the physical descendants of Israel, the same ones whose branches were presently being chopped off.
The faithful Israelite hearing Isaiah’s words of judgment knew that his nation would live again and fulfill God’s promise that all nations would be blessed (Gen 12:3). If it is true that Jesus is the fulfillment of this passage, then there is no reason for the continued existence of the Jewish people. Isaiah and the prophets thought otherwise, for they saw Jesus and they saw the fruits of his work.
Yes, the substitutionary death of Jesus is glorious. Yes, the eternal rule of Christ over his creation is glorious. And yes, the redemption of a stiff-necked, lifeless and selfish people is glorious. That Christ is redeeming Gentiles now does not preclude his redemption of Israel. One day we will marvel when this prophecy is fulfilled. This is because, frankly, it seems just as impossible today as it must have in Isaiah’s day.
Michael Oren, author of the excellent Six Days of War and recently appointed Israeli ambassador to the United States, has an essay on “Seven Existential Threats” to Israel. There really is no reason why Israel should exist twenty years from now. (Except God.)
Fascinating wall chart on where tax dollars come and go.
The Secret of Google’s Book Scanning Machine Revealed (NPR)
Let me tell you: I am not going to be missing jury duty as long as I live in Collin County!
Don’t Waste Your Life Sermon Jams. There’s a sample at the bottom. $2.50 for a CD, $15 for 10.
