Year: 2007

Sermon Notes: The Atonement

Tony Reinke Atonement, Sermon notes, spurgeon

atonement.jpgSermon Notes: The Atonement

Last night I was graciously provided an opportunity to preach on the Atonement to a group of youth. I tried to make three overall points. First, a relationship with holy God demands perfect obedience to His Law (NPP debate). Thus, the Law silences every sinner in their guilt. Secondly, I tried to highlight the Old Testament atonement imagery in light of Christ’s work on the Cross. And third, I attempted to communicate the perfect sufficiency of the Atoning work of Christ. We see this sufficiency not only in being forgiven and “getting saved” but also in the Lamb Who is the source of the River of Life. The Atonement Lamb is both sufficient to cleanse from the guilt of sin AND sufficient to fill us with spiritual life, joy and hope! May the beauty of this Lamb soak our hearts!

The Atonement – 4/29/07 – Lesson Notes (pdf)
The Atonement – 4/29/07 – Lesson Handouts (pdf)
The Atonement – 4/29/07 – Lesson Audio (mp3) 19.6 MB

[see more sermon notes]

Atheism and Revelation

Tony Reinke Atheism, Atheist, Skepticism

What I appreciate from Christopher Hitchens (and other atheist/skeptics) is the utter impossibility of the human mind to wrap itself around God.

“The mildest criticism of religion is also the most radical and the most devastating one. Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did. Still less can they hope to tell us the ‘meaning’ of later discoveries and developments which were, when they began, either obstructed by their religions or denounced by them. And yet—the believers still claim to know! Not just to know, but to know everything. Not just to know that god exists, and that he created and supervised the whole enterprise, but also to know what ‘he’ demands of us—from our diet to our observances to our sexual morality. In other words, in a vast and complicated discussion where we know more and more about less and less, yet can still hope for some enlightenment as we proceed, one faction—itself composed of mutually warring factions—has the sheer arrogance to tell us that we already have all the essential information we need. Such stupidity, combined with such pride, should be enough on its own to exclude ‘belief’ from the debate. The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species. It may be a long farewell, but it has begun and, like all farewells, should not be protracted.” [Slate mag]

All the more, this forces us back to the graciousness of God, that He discloses Himself. First, in the “theater” of creation and then more specifically in His Word — Jesus Christ (John 1) — and then confirms His revelation by the power of His Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:16). The answer is in Him, not my blog. As Tom Fluharty profoundly puts it, “I cannot be right and I’m never wrong because Christ is true!” Can the Church, following this revelation of God, be any less solipsistic?

1 John 5:9-10a says, “If we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he has borne concerning his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself …” The testimony of men will prove to be a mass of contradictions, an unstable foundation for our eternal hope. But this is all we have until and unless God speaks and seals!

English Puritans on Meditation

Tony Reinke Meditation, Nathanael Ranew, Puritans

My friend Amy Gant has a published new website devoted to the topic of English Puritan Meditation. The website complements her excellent MA thesis, “‘Beating a Path to Heaven’: Nathanael Ranew and the Puritan Art of Divine Meditation in the Seventeenth Century.” The thesis focused on Ranew’ book Solitude improved by divine meditation.

From the website:

“To the Puritans, divine meditation involved personal devotion and edification in the sense of thinking godly thoughts – thinking the type of thoughts that Jesus Christ Himself might think. Or, as Richard Baxter put it, “…meditation is but the reading over and repeating God’s reasons to our hearts, and so disputing with ourselves in his arguments and terms.” As scholar Richard Douglas Jordan has said, Baxter also “took a stand against enthusiasm in devotion and saw meditation as involved with reason and the written word. In his Christian Directory, Baxter spoke of the Christian’s delight in God as a ‘solid rational’ experience.” These understandings stemmed both from Scriptural examples such as those in the Psalms and from biblically-based doctrines of salvation, sanctification, and more, which provide motivation for many of the Christian disciplines.

It required a great amount of personal self-control to focus one’s mind upon unseen realities such as God and Heaven. The motivation for such intellectual pursuits was based, again, in Puritan doctrine: they were committed to meditation because they understood the Scriptures to teach that it was God’s will for them to practice it. Yet the great emphasis, earnestness and time commitment which they gave to this task is best understood in light of the Puritan sense of urgency in performing all the spiritual disciplines, and in living a godly life in general. Because of their focus on the shortness of life, Puritans tended to abhor unnecessary wasting of the time that God had given them, as servants, to perform their duties on earth. For this reason, mental discipline came to be very important for the Puritans – and meditation was a large part of that process.”

You will find a great deal of biblical and historical information on the art of divine meditation. I would encourage you to take some time this weekend to look around.

Created by God, for God

Tony Reinke Atheism, Atheist, Skepticism

I’m a sucker for witty prose. So Sam Harris’ endorsement of atheist Christopher Hitchens’ new book (God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything) caught my attention:

“If God intended reasonable men and women to worship Him without embarrassment, why did He create Christopher Hitchens? It was a fatal miscalculation. In God Is Not Great, Hitchens not only demonstrates that religion is man-made — and made badly — he laughs the whole monstrosity to rubble. This is a profoundly clever book, addressing the most pressing social issue of our time, by one of the finest writers in the land.”

– Sam Harris, Author of the New York Times bestsellers The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation

I know this endorsement was intended to be funny, but it raises interesting questions: Was the creation of Christopher Hitchens a “fatal misconception” by God or is there more to it?

What if God — to declare his power throughout the world — created Christopher Hitchens to consume his mind with Himself? What if Christopher was created by God to shake lethargic God-ignorers into more serious thought? What if God created this atheist for the purpose of one day shocking the world by his repentance and faith in Jesus Christ? Maybe God created Christopher to further evidence the indestructibility of His church? Maybe Christopher was created to help the church sharpen its understanding of God’s Word, spiritual battles and the beautiful marriage of science and faith? Or maybe God created Christopher in order to patiently wait for an opportunity to display His holy power and wrath (Rom. 9:22)?

It’s not possible right now to know exactly why God created Christopher Hitchens. But somehow, at some time, God will reveal His infinite wisdom. Bottom line: God created Christopher Hitchens — and Sam Harris — for His own glory. What infinite wisdom! “For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart’” (1 Cor. 1:19).

Christopher Hitchens was no “fatal miscalculation.” He bears the Potter’s fingerprints as much as anyone.

———————–

Related: See Doug Wilson’s review of God is Not Great.

Todd Agnew: “Shepherd, your sheep are weary”

Tony Reinke Preaching, Shepherding, Sin, Sin in the church

I wanted to take a moment this Friday morning to encourage preachers. You may even be taking a break from sermon preparation to read this and I want to say thank you for serving your flock by teaching them Scripture. I want to use this opportunity to remind you that your sheep come in “battered and bruised and torn” from a week spent seeking happiness and joy in the world’s false promises and illusions. Some of your sheep who will listen to your sermons are right now lost in the luring promises of worldly joy and they need someone to point them back to Jesus and His Cross. This work, this joy, this privilege, falls to you. Today I post the lyrics to a song called Shepherd by Todd Agnew (Grace Like Rain album) to help remind us of the important role pastors play in the lives of their sheep. Thank you for your diligent shepherding of eternal souls!

Shepherd by Todd Agnew

Shepherd, your sheep are weary
Cold and tired, battered and bruised and torn
Shepherd, your sheep are hungry
We got what we want but we still need something more

Chorus:
We need to hear your voice
Whatever You might say
We just need to hear your voice
Show us the way

Shepherd, your sheep are lost
We chased our wants that we thought were needs
Now we can’t get home
Shepherd, your sheep are longing
We ate and we ran, we played and we danced, but we’re empty

(Chorus) x2

Shepherd, these sheep are Yours
We tried to be king, but we don’t want to anymore

C.J. Mahaney: “Trinitarian Pastoral Ministry”

Tony Reinke 2007 SGM LC, C.J. Mahaney, John Owen, Justin Taylor

Friday evening (4/13/07)
General Session #5
C.J. Mahaney: “Trinitarian Pastoral Ministry”

GAITHERSBURG, MD – The year 2007 will be remembered as an important year in the careful study of John Owen’s theology. With the recent release of Kelly Kapic’s Communion with God: The Divine and the Human in the Theology of John Owen (Baker: 2007) and the forthcoming release of Crossway’scj-mahaney.jpg retypeset edition of Owen’s Communion with the Triune God, I anticipate an increasingly balanced awareness of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This beautiful Trinitarian balance of Owen was echoed and applied pastorally by C.J. Mahaney in the concluding address of the 2007 Sovereign Grace Ministries Leader’s Conference.

Mahaney began by cautioning pastors from allowing culture to define the model of ministry. The form and substance of pastoral ministry is defined by the character and work of the Triune God. The character and work of the Triune Godhead is displayed in the final verse of 2 Corinthians: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (13:14). Mahaney detailed each character and work of the Three Persons of the Godhead. The order here (Son, Father, Holy Spirit) seems to be ordered by our experience of Him.

“The Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ”

We first meet Christ. The Cross comes first. Paul never assumes the Gospel even up until the very last verse of 2 Corinthians. For Paul, everything comes back to the Gospel.

But to proclaim the grace of the Cross means we must proclaim sin. Proclaiming sin well – without concealing grace – takes a lot of work. Exposing sin is much easier than applying grace and exposing sin should never be done by men who cannot rightly apply grace. Grace is the message applied to sin. We can never take our eyes of Calvary. Once we lose sight of Calvary, we miss our path. In every sermon there will be a sighting of Calvary. That is Paul’s example in 2 Corinthians even as he confronts sin.

“The Love of God”

Secondly, the work of pastoral ministry is to convince others of God’s love, specifically God’s personal love for His children. Verbally and passionately position others to experience the Father’s love personally. Several other passages show the love of God in the salvation of sinners, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8) … “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 Jn. 3:1) … “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8). The love of God is displayed in the Cross and in adopting sinners into His family!

It was the Father’s love that motivated the Cross. Christ died because God loved us! God initiated the Cross out of love. Sinclair Ferguson says, “We should almost think God loved us more than He loves His Son.” God persuades us of His love in the Cross.

To be right with God (justified) is a great thing, so too is being adopted by God the Father. Read Sinclair Ferguson’s Children of the Living God, J.I. Packer’s Knowing God (on adoption) and Trevor Burke’s Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor.

How do I leave my people on Sunday? Do they walk away with a deep sense of God’s love towards them?

“The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit”

There is a life of participation with the Holy Spirit. We are dependent upon the Holy Spirit and so we pursue His presence and His power with eagerness. We are called to grow, desire and pursue the power of the Holy Spirit as governed by the authority of Scripture. There is a tremendous breadth and diversity of this fellowship.

(It was at this point C.J. explained why he prefers the term “continuist” over “charismatic”). The power of the Holy Spirit is broader than the miraculous. We should understand the Holy Spirit in this broad diversity. In the Corinthian church, as evidenced in the two Pauline letters, there was a minimizing of some of the Holy Spirit’s work. The Corinthians held a fascination with the gift of tongues. And so on the list of gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:29 Paul places tongues last on the list of gifts. The spectacular does not happen every day and because of this we need to avoid the Corinthian error of being fascinated with some gifts and the minimizing of others. We need to celebrate the work of the Holy Spirit in its broad diversity without exaggerating the significance of one particular gift.

It’s important to become more perceptive to the work of the Holy Spirit in this diversity. For example, there is a proneness to placing authority in the prophetic gifts over Scripture. Beware of emphasizing one gift at the exclusion of the others.

The ultimate priority of the Holy Spirit’s work is to reveal the Savior and the blessings of the Gospel! The work of the Holy Spirit cannot be understood apart from the message of the Cross. As D.A. Carson writes, “To be spiritual is profoundly tied to the Cross.”

Conclusion

This final message from the Leader’s Conference left us with much for further meditation. The encouragement to work at presenting the Father in His love is a good challenge. It is easy to display God solely in His holy vengeance, so that for the Christian to think of Him as a loving, tender Father becomes (practically speaking) a foreign concept. I need to let my adoption by God capture more of my affection and experience, like the doctrine of justification has in the past. Mahaney’s statement that ‘exposing sin is much easier than applying grace, and exposing sin should never be done by men who cannot rightly apply grace’ continues to echo in my thoughts. It is a true statement and very humbling for this aspiring preacher. This message was a great challenge to define pastoral ministry within the balanced context of God’s Triunity.

I’m not sure who talks faster, C.J. or John Moschitta, so to get the full details I would once again suggest this message from the 2007 Sovereign Grace Leader’s Conference as worthy the sacrifice of a venti Americano.

Overall, the conference was an incredible experience. The content and structure of the breakout sessions and the general sessions were excellent. And to spend three nights being led in worship by Bob Kauflin, singing songs like “Before the Throne,” was certainly a glimpse into the eternal worship around the throne of the Lamb! Speaking of heavenly things, the bookstore was well-stocked and efficiently run. The conference carried an excellent blend of Bibles, theology, pastoral counseling, biography, children’s books and music. For me personally, the conference provided a great opportunity to grow closer to our friends who also traveled from Minneapolis and to see the generousness and loving care our church in Minneapolis continues to pour out on my wife and family! I can summarize the words of others, but trying to summarize the experience of the conference is really not possible. Thanks for reading the updates! -Tony

—————

Related 2007 SGM LC sessions:

 

1. 2007 Sovereign Grace Ministries Leadership Conference

2. R.C. Sproul: “The Holiness of God”

3. Rick Gamache: “Watch Your Devotional Life”

4. Mark Dever: “Watch the Past: Living Lessons from Dead Theologians”

5. David Powlison: “‘In the Last Analysis…’ Look out for Introspection”

6. C.J. Mahaney: “Trinitarian Pastoral Ministry”

7. 2007 Conference photographs