The Holdfast

I’ll never get tired of John Newton. I’ve been listening to the Desiring God Conference mp3’s from two weekends ago, and I was greatly blessed by the address by Tim Keller. One thing that he continually did during his lecture was quote John Newton — a sure way to gain MY favor. Here’s one that he quoted in full:

Prayer answered by crosses.

I asked the LORD that I might grow
In faith, and love, and every grace;
Might more of his salvation know,
And seek, more earnestly, his face.

‘Twas he who taught me thus to pray,
And he, I trust, has answered prayer!
But it has been in such a way,
As almost drove me to despair.

I hoped that in some favored hour,
At once he’d answer my request;
And by his love’s constraining pow’r,
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.

Instead of this, he made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart;
And let the angry pow’rs of hell
Assault my soul in every part.

Yea more, with his own hand he seemed
Intent to aggravate my woe;
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds, and laid me low.

LORD, why is this, I trembling cried,
Wilt thou pursue thy worm to death?
“‘Tis in this way, the LORD replied,
I answer prayer for grace and faith.

These inward trials I employ,
From self, and pride, to set thee free;
And break thy schemes of earthly joy,
That thou may’st find thy all in me.”

You have to check out Kim’s 15 minutes of fame over at the Dallas Morning News State Fair blog. They even have a picture of her.

Sometimes I feel postmillennial and I just want to “redeem the culture” and I suspect that this world IS my home. And the weird thing is that there is a way in which it is true! God never meant for us to exist without a world to take care of. There will be a new heaven and a NEW EARTH. We will always be taking care of the earth, the earth the way it should have been all along. But THIS world… is not my home.

Once again I have been challenged by John Piper’s sermon on Romans 12:1-2. I hope that every single one who reads this will download the audio from June 27, 2004, and listen carefully to it.

Piper quotes a guy named Andrew Walls as saying that there are two equally true principles which must be held in tension; he called them “the pilgrim principle” and “the indigenous principle.” The pilgrim principle holds the world, and this life, loosely: I’m ready to go, and you can come with me if you will. The indigenous principle says that the Gospel has something to say to every culture, and we better get ready to contextualize and speak to our culture.

In other words, the gospel can and must become indigenous in every (fallen!) culture in the world. It can and must find a home in the culture. It must fit in. That�??s the indigenous impulse. But at the same time, and just as powerful, the gospel produces a pilgrim mindset. It loosens people from their culture. It criticizes and corrects culture. It turns people into pilgrims and aliens and exiles in their own culture. When Paul says, �??Do not conformed to this world,�?� and �??I became all things to all people,�?� he is not confused; he is calling for a critical balance of two crucial biblical impulses.

I find that this disctinction helps explain a lot of the contradictions in the Christian life, and it is very dangerous to adopt just one of the two principles. Alone, the pilgrim principle produces wonderful, death-defying missionaries, but with no appreciation for the idea of “common grace” or the link we have with fallen humanity. Alone, the indigenous principle could produce something like mainstream liberal theology, with concern for “the poor” but no concern for their eternal souls. We must have both, somehow.

Andrew Fuller’s classic book of the above title was published in the late 1700’s. Depending on your perspective, it either killed Calvinism or revived it. My perspective is that it revived Calvinism and that it was a legitimate development of the Puritans and the Great Awakening evangelists. Fuller’s friend William Carey was the first Protestant English missionary to foreign lands, and is usually credited with kicking off the modern missions movement.

Fuller’s accomplishment was to provide the theological underpinnings for the new foreign missions, by combating the deadening hypercalvinism/antinomianism that had gripped English Baptist life. Drawing heavily upon the thought of Owen and Edwards, Fuller showed that because it was moral inability, not natural inability, that prevented men and women from receiving the gospel, the gospel was to be preached to all, indiscriminately. This seems so obvious to us now, but there are dear brothers even today who believe that Fuller was the source of all heresy and apostasy and that he perverted the doctrines of salvation.

I believe that Fuller is important and that the doctrines contained in The Gospel Worthy Of All Acceptation are mostly the pure doctrine of Scripture. (Whether Fuller in later life can be charged with any other errors is not in my area of knowledge, and it doesn’t affect my opinion of this book.)

I used to access this book at a site called thebaptistpage.com, now known as baptistpage.org, but it seems to be out of date and broken. So I’ve republished the files on my site here. As far as I know, they are available nowhere else on the web.

A group based near Ft Worth (actually Glen Rose), called the Fellowship of Reformed Churches, has not only a website, but an annual conference. The information is located here. It looks great! The date is Oct 14 (during the State Fair, yikes) and the location is Southwestern Baptist Seminary. The title of the conference is “Humble Orthodoxy.”

Wow. How about a Reformed Presbyterian preacher who uses poetry to make fun of, and refute, false doctrine? Such a man was Ralph Erskine (1685-1752). But on the White Horse Inn last week, Michael Horton quoted one of his more mainstream poems, a selection from his Gospel Sonnets entitled “Redemption in Christ.” Here is a selection; the complete poem is in Section II of this page at Reformation Ink.

The second Adam, sov’reign Lord of all,
Did, by his Father’s authorizing call,
From bosom of eternal love descend,
To save the guilty race that him offend;
To treat an everlasting peace with those,
Who were, and ever would have been his foes.
His errand, never-ending life to give
To them, whose malice would not let him live;
To make a match with rebels, and espouse
The brat which at his love her spite avows.
Himself he humbled, to depress her pride,
And make his mortal foe his loving bride.
But, ere there marriage can be solemniz’d,
All lets must be remov’d, all parties pleas’d.
Law-righteousness requir’d, must be procur’d,
Law-vengeance threatned, must be full endur’d,
Stern justice must have credit by the match,
Sweet mercy by the heart the bride must catch.
Poor Bankrupt! all her debt must first be paid,
Her former husband in the grave be laid:
Her present Lover must be at the cost,
To save and ransom to the uttermost.

If you let Everett loose with a camera, you’re bound to get some fun. Here is Kim’s reaction to some of the times Everett wanted to point a camera at her:

On the other hand, when he does catch you unaware, you might not totally like the result. Thus the hand in the face. Here, he catches his Mama from below:

But I love it when he caught his teacher in a great teaching moment:

But sometimes, he hits it just right. Here, he captures two of my favorite people at the lunch table.

A short post in tribute of one of the great scholars of our time - Jaroslav Pelikan of Yale, preeminent historian of Christian doctrine, Lutheran convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, and one of the great storytellers. Yale’s article is here. His five-volume The Christian Tradition has been a great book to have in my life. It would be nice if people who think The Da Vinci Code was based on scholarship could read something like this instead. Real life is more thrilling anyway than fiction.

Also a belated thank you to my Texas Tech “History of Christian Thought” professor Rev. Arthur Preisinger, now retired from Texas Lutheran University, for introducing me to this magnificent author. You can also read Al Mohler’s tribute to Dr. Pelikan here.

Trivia: If you look closely at the credits for the classic B&W Martin Luther movie from the 50’s, you will see Dr. Pelikan credited as a consultant there.

In honor of our 25th anniversary (Seven weeks ago! … yes, you can send gifts if you want to), I offer this English folk song that expresses how we all love our wives:

Both sexes give ear to my fancy,
While in praise of dear woman I sing;
Confined not to Moll, Sue, or Nancy,
But mates from a beggar to king.

When old Adam first was created,
And lord of the universe crowned,
His happiness was not completed,
Until that an helpmate was found.

He’d all things in food that were wanting
To keep and support him through life;
He’d horses and foxes for hunting,
Which some men love better than wife.

He’d a garden so planted by nature,
Man cannot produce in his life;
But yet the all-wise great Creator
Still saw that he wanted a wife.

Then Adam he laid in a slumber,
And there he lost part of his side;
And when he awoke, with a wonder,
Beheld his most beautiful bride!

In transport he gazed upon her,
His happiness now was complete!
He praised his bountiful donor,
Who thus had bestowed him a mate.

She was not took out of his head, sir,
To reign and triumph over man;
Nor was she took out of his feet, sir,
By man to be trampled upon.

But she was took out of his side, sir,
His equal and partner to be;
But as they’re united in one, sir,
The man is the top of the tree.

Man without a woman’s a beggar,
Suppose the whole world he possessed;
And the beggar that’s got a good woman,
With more than the world he is blest.

Then let not the fair be despised
By man, as she’s part of himself;
For woman by Adam was prized
More than the whole globe full of wealth.

People who know me well probably know where I’m going next. Handel’s Messiah is the most incredible choral piece for a lover of the Scriptures. I’m well aware that music lovers are going to name Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion as an even greater masterpiece, and certainly Messiah has suffered from some overexposure. But most people are only overexposed to a few parts of it, or maybe just one: the Hallelujah Chorus.

You need to listen to the whole thing, with the book in front of you. Notice how Handel and his librettist, Charles Jennens, weave together the Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah. In fact the first strictly New Testament quote does not come until track 14. The work is structured into three parts: Part 1 is the prophecies, birth, and ministry of Christ, Part 2 is his death and resurrection and this age of preaching the gospel, and Part 3 is the resurrection of the dead and the end of the world. It is interesting that the Hallelujah Chorus is at the end of Part 2, not Part 3, and presumably commemorates Christ’s second coming. That’s okay, because in my opinion the chorus at the end of Part 3 (Worthy Is The Lamb) is even grander and more glorious than Hallelujah.

Which brings us to the musical highlights. How can you “highlight” a work that is uninterrupted genius from beginning to end? (Away with single-CD Messiah highlights editions.) But here are a few of my very favorite parts.

• The beginning “Comfort ye my people.” How merciful our God is to send a long-promised Savior to live among us and comfort us!
• The prophecy (from Isaiah), “For unto us a child is born.” When they sing WONDERFUL, COUNSELOR, THE MIGHTY GOD, THE PRINCE OF PEACE, it will send shivers up your back.
• The way the “Pastoral Symphony,” which is instrumental, leads into the peaceful “There were shepherds abiding in a field.” I can’t describe this. You have to hear it.
• “Lift up your heads, O ye gates,” an Old Testament passage, which Handel inserts into the triumpant Resurrection section.
• “Since by man came death,” where Handel alternates between quiet choruses representing Death, and loud shouts of triumph over death by the Man, the Last Adam, who killed Death once and for all. “EVEN SO IN CHRIST SHALL ALL BE MADE ALIVE!” Yeah!
• “The trumpet shall sound,” where, of course, a trumpet is used to great effect.
• And, of course, the chorus “Worthy is the Lamb,” which is from Revelation 5. If this track does not inspire you, then you are a block of wood.

Every word of Messiah is Scripture. That’s not to take away from excellent works like Bach’s Passions, which consist of many added words. But when you sing Messiah, you are singing Scripture. It’s very inspiring. Most of the scriptures that are used in Messiah are so familiar to me now, that I can hardly read them in the Bible without singing Handel’s music to myself.

This piece has been with me since college, but I’ve recently acquired one of the best CD versions, shown in the graphic. You need to get one!