Fool Moon Rising

Tony Reinke BR > Crossway, Children, Self-promotion, Self-strength

If you were a reader of this blog back in 2007, Tom Fluharty needs no introduction. You’ve already heard about my love and respect for this man. While my family and I lived in Minneapolis we met Tom, his wife Kristi, and their wonderful family and I doubt our lives have been the same since.

Tom is a world-class painter/illustrator and the only thing more amazing than his family and his artistic skill and his passion to lead worship in his local church is the story of how God broke into his life and converted him. I sat down with Tom two years ago in Minneapolis to record his testimony.

Today I’m honored to announce that Tom and Kristi have completed their first children’s book, Fool Moon Rising (Crossway 2009). The book is now available for pre-order and will be available at the end of September. Parents and grandparents now have at their fingertips an attractive book that will help them explain to their children the stark contrast between a self-glorifying life and a God-glorifying life. This distinction is a very critical lesson in life, but it’s not always a spiritual lesson that parents find easy to articulate to children, and especially in a way that highlights the importance of our Savior. This book does it!

I’ve read this book 20 times and I love it! My kids love it! I think any reader of Fool Moon Rising will be compelled by the lively illustrations and hear the unmistakable urgency of its message.

To help you get a feel for the book’s storyline, development, its purpose, authors, and to see examples of Tom’s illustrations, see the following website:

foolmoonrising.com

Here is the publisher’s description:

This rhyming, rollicking tale tells of a crime of cosmic proportions: the moon, blinded by pride, fails to see the true source of his abilities—the light provided by the sun. He boasts of his ability to shine, to change shape throughout each month, and to swell the tides. One day, overwhelmed by a piercing ray of sunshine, the moon repents of his pride and changes his ways, and from that point on he is happy to reflect the sun’s light.

This beautifully illustrated book introduces the concept of humility to children. Readers will be reminded that everything we have, including our gifts and talents, is from God. Just as the moon learns to boast only of the sun, children—and their parents—learn that to boast of anything other than the Son is utter foolishness.

God’s Rod

Tony Reinke Suffering, Trials

“I used to think it was a ‘cruel’ doctrine to say that troubles and sorrows were ‘punishments.’ But I find in practice that when you are in trouble, the moment you regard it as a ‘punishment’, it becomes easier to bear. If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.”

—C.S. Lewis, Answers to Questions on Christianity.

Calvin’s “pastoral variation of the Institutes”

Tony Reinke John Calvin, Psalms

“…only two years lie between the appearance of the commentary on the Psalms (1557) and the publication of the last Latin edition of the Institutes (1559). Given certain passages which are duplicated nearly verbatim in both works, it is noticeable that Calvin worked on both books simultaneously. In light of the distinction in genre and reading audience as well as the correspondence in content, I would like to define the commentary on the Psalms as a pastoral variation of the Institutes. In his commentary in particular Calvin applies himself to the main themes of the Institutes and gives them form so that they are directly applicable to the practice of living in faith. This would also explain why Calvin sometimes brings issues into consideration during his exposition which neither appear in the text of the Psalm nor seem to directly relate to it, and meanwhile Calvin makes far fewer references to contemporary events and situations than others commentators from the era do. Hence discussions of such things as the Lord’s Supper and the Trinity do not occur at all, and the matter of election scarcely occurs.”

—Herman J. Selderhuis, Calvin’s Theology of the Psalms (Baker Academic 2007) pp. 283-284.

The Plowman’s Education

Tony Reinke General revelation, Herman Bavinck

“In Isaiah 28:26 we read that God instructs the plowman, teaching him how he is to do his work. But this instruction does not come to the plowman in writing, in so many words, nor in the form of lessons at school; it is a teaching, rather, which is contained and expressed in all the laws of nature, in the character of air and of soil, of time and place, of grain and corn. What the plowman must do is conscientiously to get to know all those laws of nature, and in this way to learn the lesson which God teaches in them.”

—Herman Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith (Eerdmans 1956), p. 65.

“Obedience is its own reward”

Tony Reinke Obedience to Scripture

At times I flip back in my Moleskine notebook of sermon scribbles to recollect what I was learning 12 months ago. It’s a humbling exercise to realize that very little of what I actually hear during a sermon will stick in my brain for a year. And it’s a bit discouraging, too. Apparently I require chronic review of everything I’ve ever learned (paradoxical, I know).

But I do remember one sermon from last summer. At about this time at Covenant Life Church, Joshua Harris’s father Gregg Harris preached a fantastic message on the topic of parenting (so good I remember it!). The entire message is worth a listen but the following excerpt previewed the topic of parenting and highlights an essential character of the wisdom literature of Scripture. Obedience is its own reward.

Harris said,

“The thing that we sometimes fail to understand about God’s Word, and the wisdom that it offers us, is that it’s intended to be the light upon our path. Some of us read our Bible’s like a man looking into the glare of his flashlight in a dark cave. He is as blind as if he had no light at all because he is not relating what Scripture says with what he’s doing. It’s intended to be a light upon the path.

Sometimes we fall into the mistaken notion that when we obey God’s Word that somehow we are putting God in our debt. But obedience is its own reward. When you step over something that’s in your way because you are walking in the light of God’s Word, you don’t suddenly turn to God and say, ‘Okay God, I obeyed, now pay me!’ The fact that you did not fall on your face is reward enough. And sometimes we fail to make that connection.

Wisdom itself is that ability to see how one thing relates to another in God’s purposes. That this relates to that because of who He is—and He is good and wise. And when we understand this, the commandments of the Lord and the wisdom literature of the bible become a delight to us, not a burden. It is not a distraction from what would have been more enjoyable but rather it’s rescuing from what would have been horrible.”

—Gregg Harris, sermon: “Don’t Waste Your Kids,” July 27, 2008, Covenant Life Church, 1:39-3:15 markers.

And for more on the idea that “obedience is its own reward” check out Deuteronomy 6:24, 10:12-13, and Proverbs 9:12. May we live this out, being people who truly delight in God’s Law (Psalm 1:1-2). And may I never forget it!

Prompt Confession of Sin

Tony Reinke BR > Banner of Truth, Confessing sin, Octavius Winslow

“I feel when I have sinned an immediate reluctance to go to Christ. I am ashamed to go. I feel as if it would not do to go, as if it were making Christ the minister of sin, to go straight from the swine-trough to the best robe, and a thousand other excuses. But I am persuaded they are all lies direct from hell. John argues the opposite way—‘If any man sins, we have an advocate with the Father;’ … The holy sensitiveness of the soul that shrinks from the touch of sin, the acute susceptibility of the conscience at the slightest shade of guilt, will of necessity draw the spiritual mind frequently to the blood of Jesus. And herein lies the secret of a heavenly walk. Acquaint yourself with it, my reader, as the most precious secret of your life. He who lives in the habit of a prompt and minute acknowledgement of sin, with his eye reposing calmly, believingly, upon the crucified Redeemer, soars in spirit where the eagle’s pinion [wings] range not.”

—Octavius Winslow, No Condemnation in Christ Jesus (Banner of Truth 1853/1991), pp. 79—80.