Year: 2007

Cross-Centered Puritans: Stephen Charnock

Tony Reinke Cross of Christ, Cross-centered life, Stephen Charnock

The Cross as the ‘spring of our happiness’
by Stephen Charnock (1628-1680)

Let us delight in the knowledge of Christ crucified, and be often in the thoughts and study of him. Study Christ, not only as living but dying, not as breathing in our air, butcrosscenteredpuritans.jpg suffering in our stead; know him as a victim, which is the way to know him as a Conqueror. Christ as crucified is the great object of faith. All the passages of his life, from his nativity to his death, are passed over in the creed without reciting, because, though they are things to be believed, yet the belief of them is not sufficient without the belief of the Cross; in that alone was our redemption wrought. Had he only lived, he would have not been a Savior. If our faith stops in his life, and does not fasten upon his blood, it will not be a justifying faith. His miracles, which prepared the world for his doctrine, and his holiness, which fitted himself for his suffering, would have been insufficient for us without the addition of the Cross. Without this, we had been under the demerit of our crimes, the venom of our natures, the slavery of our sins, and the tyranny of the devil; without this, we should forever have had God for our enemy, and Satan for our executioner; without this, we had lain groaning under the punishment of our transgressions, and despaired of any smile from heaven. It was this death as a sacrifice that appeased God and as a price redeemed us. Nothing is so strong to encourage us; nothing so powerful to purify us; how can we be without thinking of it? …

This will be the foundation of all our comforts. What comfort can be wanting, when we can look upon Christ crucified as our surety, and look upon ourselves as crucified in him, when we can consider our sins as punished in him, and ourselves accepted by virtue of his Cross? It was not an angel which was crucified for us, but the Son of God; one of an equal dignity with the Father; one that shed blood enough to blot out the demerit of our crimes, were they more than could be numbered by all the angels of heaven, if all were made known to them. He was not crucified for a few, but for all sorts of offenses. When we shall see judgment in the world, what comfort can we take without a knowledge and sense of a crucified Christ? What a horror is it for a condemned man to see the preparation of the gibbets, halters and executioners? But when he shall see a propitiation made for him, the anger of the Prince atoned, the Law some other way satisfied, and his condemnation changed into remission; all his former terrors vanish, and a sweet and pleasing calm possesses him… When we tremble under a sense of our sins, the terrors of the Judge and the curses of the Law, let us look upon a crucified Christ, the remedy to all our miseries. His Cross has procured a crown. His passion [death] has expiated our transgressions. His death has disarmed the Law. His blood has washed a believers soul. This death is the destruction of our enemies, the spring of our happiness, the eternal testimony of divine love. We have good reason, as well as the apostle Paul, to determine with ourselves to know nothing but Jesus Christ, and especially him crucified.

-Transcribed from “A Discourse of the Knowledge of Christ Crucified,” taken from the 2 volume Works of Stephen Charnock (London: 1684) pp. 844-845

God, all-sufficient

Tony Reinke Thomas Brooks

God, all-sufficient
by Thomas Brooks (1608-1680)

O Christians! God is an all-sufficient portion!
His power is all-sufficient to protect you;
His wisdom is all-sufficient to direct you;
His mercy is all-sufficient to pardon you;
His goodness is all-sufficient to provide for you;
His word is all-sufficient to support you and strengthen you;
His grace is all-sufficient to adorn you and enrich you;
His Spirit is all-sufficient to lead you and comfort you!
What more can you desire?

O sirs! God is one infinite perfection in Himself!
God has within Himself …
all good,
all glory,
all dignity,
all riches,
all treasures,
all pleasures,
all delights,
all comforts,
all contentments,
all joys,
all beatitudes!

All are eminently, transcendently, and perfectly in Him!

God is a sufficient portion . . .
to secure your souls,
to supply all your needs,
to satisfy all your desires,
to answer all your expectations,
to suppress all your enemies,
to bring you to glory!

What more can you desire?

– from the Works of Thomas Brooks

Miscellaneous Monday

Tony Reinke Books, BR > Reformation Heritage Books, DVD, Homeschooling, Movies, Musical Worship

Miscellaneous Monday

Good morning friends! I’ve got a list of things I need to write on and figured these would be best expressed in some miscellaneous notes.

——————

Resources for children

First off this Monday morning I want to recommend some excellent resources for children. My wife and I made a commitment last year to package our television away. We had grown lazy and began extending our time in front of the tube so we decided to wrap it up and put it out of sight. Now we spend a lot more time together reading, listening to music, and watching DVD movies on our computer (we’re much less prone to laziness with a computer and limited DVDs). Much of what we’ve read, listened to and watched we do not recommend. But here are three resources we’ve tested and found to be excellent.

Reading. Communicating the substitutionary atonement of Christ to appease the wrath of a holy God is a concept parents must work at communicating to little souls. Yet, many resources for children fail to communicate this theme. C.S. Lewis’, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe presents the work of Aslan (Christ) as the appeasement the White Witch (Satan) sounding more like Origen’s “Ransom to Satan Theory” than the Biblical Gospel. I think this shows just how tough it really is to present to children the substitution of Christ as the appeasement of God’s justice (even the literary genius struggles here). This is why Caleb’s Lamb by Helen Santos remains one of our family-favorite books. Santos succeeds at clarifying the atonement for children and keeping it within the context of the holiness of God. In the beginning a young boy rescues a spotless lamb and in the end the spotless lamb rescues the boy. It’s set in the historical time of the Exodus. We reviewed this book in months past but a book I recommend time and time again.

Listening. Our family has enjoyed Hide the Word CDs by Mark Altrogge that take biblical passages and set them to music. We just came across a new series of CDs written with the same purpose called Seeds Family Worship. After listening to two albums (Seeds of Courage and Seeds of Purpose) we are very impressed with the quality of this project. The Seeds series music was recorded with a full band and is of the same musical quality as the best contemporary recordings. It would, however, be nice to hear more songs centered on the Gospel, so I’ll continue highly recommending the Hide the Word series where children are constantly pointed back to the Cross. Nevertheless, I would put the Seeds CDs on a wishlish. You can listen to excerpts and get more information here.

Watching. As much as my children love vegetables, I try to expose them also to biographical videos. The Torchlighters: Heroes of the Faith series does this very well. These are animated movies of about 30 minutes each. They contain very accurate historical details that you may not catch until you compare these movies with books. The William Tyndale Story and the John Bunyan Story are our favorites. Tyndale worked on (and died for) translating the Bible into English. The video portrays his struggles, successes and eventual martyrdom. Because I love Bunyan, The John Bunyan Story was my personal favorite. It revealed a gentle man driven out of a love for souls and firmly committed to preaching the Word of God to that end. My son loved the fight with the dragon in the Pilgrim’s Progress flashback scenes. These are children’s movies with plenty of action but also loaded with historical content and come with study guides for further use in homeschooling or Sunday school classes. In passing, I would recommend two documentary DVDs for adults. First was the interview with Dr. David Daniell titled William Tyndale: Man with a Mission. Daniell is a top Tyndale scholar and filled with interesting historical details of Tyndale’s life. The John Bunyan: The Journey of a Pilgrim DVD was an interesting tour of the life of Bunyan by John Prestell who works at the Bunyan Museum in Bedford, England. My wife and I enjoyed watching the animations with the kids and then the documentaries after the kids were in bed. Date nights the Calvinist way.

——————

Interview

Ever headed over to desiringGod.com and found the Piper sermon you were looking for? It’s a breeze because of the diligent work of website manger Joshua Sowin. When he’s not indexing and making accessible the life works of John Piper he directs the Fire and Knowledge blog/website. Today at his site he posted an interview with myself. We talked about life, books and reading. You can read the interview here.

——————

Review

Today over at TakeUpAndRead.com I published John Tweeddale’s review of Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics by Richard Muller. I would recommend you check it out. I asked John to write a review focused on how educated laypersons and pastors could effectively use this excellent work and he did not disappoint! Read the review here. Note that Monergism has dropped the price of this set down to just $79.00!

——————

New Winslow

As many of you know, my favorite author is Octavius Winslow (1808-1878). I like to track when his books are printed. The latest is Our God a study of the communicable attributes of God. Chapters include topics of God’s love, hope, patience, comfort, grace, holiness, peace and light. You can read many of Winslow’s books online for free here but I always recommend the dead tree version as best for posterity and reflection.

——————

Well, I think that’s it for now. Have a great Monday in Christ! Tony

‘Tell them that again’

Tony Reinke C.H. Spurgeon, C.J. Mahaney, Cross of Christ

‘Tell them that again’

Frequently, I like to close out the week with some encouragements for preachers. Recently I came across this interesting story from the life of Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892). In the sermon “All of Grace” on Ephesians 2:8 (#3479) he recounts an early preaching experience with his grandfather and reminds us to “tell them that again.”

I am led to remember this by the fact that a somewhat singular circumstance, recorded in my memory, connects this text [Eph. 2:8] with myself and my grandfather. It is now long years ago. I was announced to preach in a certain country town in the Eastern Counties. It does not often happen to me to be behind time, for I feel that punctuality is one of those little virtues which may prevent great sins. But we have no control over railway delays, and breakdowns; and so it happened that I reached the appointed place considerably behind the time.

Like sensible people, they had begun their worship, and had proceeded as far as the sermon. As I neared the chapel, I perceived that someone was in the pulpit preaching, and who should the preacher be but my dear and venerable grandfather! He saw me as I came in at the front door and made my way up the aisle, and at once he said, ‘Here comes my grandson! He may preach the gospel better than I can, but he cannot preach a better gospel; can you, Charles?’

As I made my way through the throng, I answered, ‘You can preach better than I can. Pray go on.’ But he would not agree to that. I must take the sermon, and so I did, going on with the subject there and then, just where he left off. ‘There,’ said he, ‘I was preaching on ‘For by grace are ye saved.’ I have been setting forth the source and fountainhead of salvation; and I am now showing them the channel of it, through faith. Now you take it up, and go on.’

I am so much at home with these glorious truths that I could not feel any difficulty in taking from my grandfather the thread of his discourse, and joining my thread to it, so as to continue without a break. Our agreement in the things of God made it easy for us to be joint-preachers of the same discourse. I went on with ‘through faith,’ and then I proceeded to the next point, ‘and that not of yourselves.’

Upon this I was explaining the weakness and inability of human nature, and the certainty that salvation could not be of ourselves, when I had my coat-tail pulled, and my well-beloved grandsire took his turn again. ‘When I spoke of our depraved human nature,’ the good old man said, ‘I know most about that, dear friends’; and so he took up the parable, and for the next five minutes set forth a solemn and humbling description of our lost estate, the depravity of our nature, and the spiritual death under which we were found.

When he had said his say in a very gracious manner, his grandson was allowed to go on again, to the dear old man’s great delight; for now and then he would say, in a gentle tone, ‘Good! Good!’ Once he said, ‘Tell them that again, Charles.’ and, of course, I did tell them that again. It was a happy exercise to me to take my share in bearing witness to truths of such vital importance, which are so deeply impressed upon my heart.

While announcing this text I seem to hear that dear voice, which has been so long lost to earth, saying to me, “TELL THEM THAT AGAIN.” I am not contradicting the testimony of forefathers who are now with God. If my grandfather could return to earth, he would find me where he left me, steadfast in the faith, and true to that form of doctrine which was once delivered to the saints.

When we preach, the testimony of faithful Gospel preachers stand behind us, pulling our coat-tails and whispering, “Tell them that again.” A great reminder for preachers to stick closely and return frequently to the fundamentals of the Gospel! In reminiscing over the 30-year history of his church, C.J. Mahaney writes, “We never assume that there’s already sufficient understanding, appreciation, and experience of ‘Jesus Christ and Him crucified'” [Living the Cross-Centered Life, p. 19].

Take it from C.H. or C.J.: “Tell them that again.”

See you Monday, Tony.

Communion with God by Kelly Kapic

Tony Reinke John Owen, spurgeon

Communion with God book details

For me no book has been more anticipated in 2007 than Kelly Kapic’s Communion with God: The Divine and the Human in the Theology of John Owen. It comes highly recommended from (among others) Joel Beeke and J.I. Packer. Kapic (PhD, King’s College, University of London) is associate professor of theological studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia.

Baker is offering a 30-percent discount and Amazon is offering a 34-percent discount (making it $18.47). Monergism is now at 35-percent off. To download the publisher’s informational flier please click here. Also, a 50-percent discount is available for college and seminary professors. If you are interested, please email me with your position and school and I’ll send you more details (tony AT tonyreinke DOT com).

“This is a landmark book in modern Puritan study, and it is a joy to commend it.” – J. I. Packer