Let all mortal flesh keep silence

Check out this hymn, great for use in before/during communion.  Also, its an appropriate topic, given the frequency with which I've posted in the past few months:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence

And with fear and trembling stand;

Ponder nothing earthly minded

For with blessing in His hand,

Christ our God to earth descendeth

Our full homage to demand 

King of kings, yet born of Mary, 

As of old on earth He stood,

Lord of lords, in human vesture, 

In the body and the blood;

He will give to all the faithful

His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven

Spreads its vanguard on the way,

As the Light of Light descendeth

From the realms of endless day,

That the powers of hell may vanish

As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six winged seraph,

Cherubim with sleepless eye, 

Veil their faces to the presence,

As with ceaseless voice they cry:

Alleluia, Alleluia

Alleluia, Lord Most High!

Silence to praise, fall to redemption, confession to assurance, the cross to the table.    

More than a matter of the mind

Jonathan Edwards on the importance of the heart and its affections:

I am bold to assert, that there never was any considerable change wrought in the mind or conversation of any person, by anything of a religious nature, that ever he read, hear, or saw, that had not his affection moved.  Never was a natural man engaged earnestly to seek his salvation; never were any such brought to cry after wisdom, and lift up their voice for understanding, and to wrestle with God in prayer for mercy; and never was one humbled, and brought to the foot of God, from anything that ever he heard or imagined of his own unworthiness and deserving of God's displeasure; nor was ever one induced to fly for refuge unto Christ, while his heart remained unaffected.  Nor was there ever a saint awakened out of a cold, lifeless flame, or recovered from a declining state in religion, and brought back from a lamentable departure from God, without have his heart affected.  And in a word, there was never anything considerable brought to pass in the heart or life of any man living, by the things of religion, that had not his heart deeply affected by those things.  

In other words:

...he that has doctrinal knowledge and speculation only, without affection, never is engaged in the business of religion. 

Also see Ezekiel 36:26.  

The cross or glory?

Check out Dan Ortlund's perfect critique of one problem with Christianity's attempt to break into Hollywood production.

Carson and Moo explain:

Because in 1 and 2 Corinthians Paul passionately develops a theology of the cross that shapes Christian ethics, Christian priorities, and Christian attitudes, the apostle directly confronts all approaches to Christianity that happily seek to integrate a generally orthodox confession with pagan values of self-promotion.  The cross not only justifies, it teaches us how to live and die, how to lead and follow, how to love and serve.  These two letters therefore speak volumes to contemporary Western Christianity, which often prides itself in its orthodoxy but is far more comfortable with twenty-first-century secularism than it has any right to be.

-Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 450-451

Also, see theology of the cross vs. theology of glory.  

All of which raises the question: to what extent is this blog an integration of "orthodox confession with pagan values of self-promotion"?  Yikes.  

The direction of discipleship

Samuel Rutherford applies Matthew 5:3-4:

When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest wines.

Emmanuel, God with us

Advent: the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event.

Look back and celebrate the first:

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. 

Truly, truly I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.  You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. 

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.  And they worshiped him...

 And look forward with anticipation to the second:

Oh come, desire of nations, bind into one the hearts of all mankind; oh bid our sad divisions cease, and be yourself our King of Peace. 

Less theatrics, more nourishment

Calvin's opinion on the Eucharist:

For Calvin, the Supper is not a theatrical miracle at which the people of God are spectators, but a living encounter with the glorious person of the ascended Christ; the elements are given not to gaze upon but to consume.

Peter Leithart,  "What's wrong with transubstantiation? An evaluation of theological models." Westminster Theological Journal 53 (1991): p. 318.

 

Whole holiness

The best thing I've ever read on how sanctification works: 

Without sincerity and diligence in a universality of obedience, there is not mortification of any one perplexing lust to be obtained...He that has a running sore upon him, arising from an ill habit of body, contracted by intemperance and ill diet, let him apply himself with what diligence an skill he can to the cure of his sore, if he leave the general habit of his body under distempers, his labor and travail will be in vain.  So will his attempts...be that shall endeavor to stop a bloody issue of sin and filth in his soul, and is not equally careful of his universal spiritual temperature and constitution.  

-John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation, eds. Kelly M. Kapic, Justin Taylor (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006), pp. 86-87.

In other words, to grow in holiness we must care for our whole person and pursue spiritual health in every way, rather than spending all of our energy eliminating one or two habitual sins.  

Every Christian, every grace

 You cannot choose which beatitudes you want to be true of your life, and leave the others to one side.  The Beatitudes come as a whole, not as a series of options.  Every Christian is intended to show every grace.  One beatitude flows into the next, as we have already seen:  the poor in spirit mourn for their sins, and as a result are marked by the meekness of those who know the truth about themselves in the presence of God.  Such men and women hunger and thirst for righteousness, and receive it.  Since they have been filled only because of the Lord's mercy to them, they become merciful to others.  

-Sinclair Ferguson, The Sermon on the Mount: Kingdom Life in a Fallen World (East Peoria, IL: Banner of Truth, 2009) pp. 35-36.

Upholder and Restorer

Sobering, encouraging, and pastoral words from Augustine, preached on the anniversary of a martyr's death: 

The whole world is against you, and you can say Who is against us?  They answer you: "And what is the whole world, when we are dying for the one by whom the world was made?"

Let them say it, let them say it, let us hear them, let us all say together, If God is for us, who is against us? 

They can rave, they can curse, they can slander, they can hound us with false reproaches, finally they can not merely destroy the body but even reduce it to shreds; and what will the achieve?  For behold, God is my helper, and the Lord is the upholder of my soul (Ps. 54:4).

Tell me, blessed martyr, your body is being torn to shreds, and you can say, "It has nothing to do with me"?

"Yes, I said that."

Why? Tell us why.

"Because the Lord is the upholder of my soul.  My body is restored through my soul..."

But your body is being torn by dogs.

"Even if my body is being torn by dogs, still it is to be raised up by the lord...Seeing that the Lord is the upholder of my soul, he will also be the restorer of my body. What will I be lacking, if the enemy tears my limbs to shreds, since God is numbering my hairs?"

So let us say, let us say out of faith, let us say in hope, let us say with the most ardent charity, If God is for us, who is against us?

[...]

How can you prove it, O glorious martyr, how can you prove to me what you say: If God is for us, who is against us?  It's obvious that if God is for you all, who can be against you?  But prove that God is for you.  

...Here, I'll teach you:  Who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all.  You heard this that follows when the apostle was read.  You see, after saying If God is for us, who is against us, [it is] as though he were told, "Prove that God is for you," straightaway he brought forward a grand document in proof, straightaway he introduced the martyr of martyrs, the witness of witnesses; namely the one whom as his own Son the Father did not spare, but handed him over for us all.

-Augustine, Sermon 334, The Works of St. Augustine.

How has God proven his love for us?  See Romans 5:8.

Louis C.K., smartphones, and the gospel

Check out this video of Louis C.K. telling Conan O'brien what he thinks of smartphones, and why he won't get them for his kids.  In it he makes a couple important points.  First, he mentions how social media and the like inhibit our ability to have compassion or develop empathy for others (he's not alone; also, see: psychopathy).  Also, and just as importantly, he notes its power to distract us from our immediate situations--but he doesn't leave it at that, he tells why that matters:  

You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something.  That's what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there.  That's being a person.  Because underneath everything in your life there's that thing, that empty--forever empty.  That knowledge that its all for nothing and that you're alone.  Its down there. 

And sometimes when things clear away, you're not watching anything, you're in your car and you start going, 'Oh no, here it comes...that I'm alone.'  It starts to visit on you.  Just this sadness.  Life is tremendously sad, just being in it.

"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick," said Jesus.

But you've got to know you're sick first.  

Pardon has dawned from the grave

 John Chrysostom on Easter.  It doesn't get much better than this:

If anyone is devout and a lover of God, let them enjoy this beautiful and radiant festival.
If anyone is a grateful servant, let them, rejoicing, enter into the joy of the Lord.
If anyone has wearied themselves in fasting, let them now receive recompense.
If anyone has labored from the first hour, let them today receive the just reward.
If anyone has come at the third hour, with thanksgiving let them feast.
If anyone has arrived at the sixth hour, let them have no misgivings; for they shall suffer no loss.
If anyone has delayed until the ninth hour, let them draw near without hesitation.
If anyone has arrived even at the eleventh hour, let them not fear on account of tardiness.
For the master is gracious and receives the last even as the first; he gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, just as to him who has labored from the first.
He has mercy upon the last and cares for the first; to the one He gives, and to the other he is gracious.
Enter all of you, therefore, into the joy of our Lord, and, whether first or last, receive your reward.  

O rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy!
O you ascetics and you negligent, celebrate the day!
You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today!
The table is rich-laden: feast royally all of you!
The calf is fatted: let no one go forth hungry!

Let all partake of the feast of faith.  Let all receive the riches of goodness.
Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior's death has set us free.  

He that was taken by death has annihilated it!
He descended into Hades and took Hades captive!
He embittered it when it tasted His flesh!  And anticipating this, Isaiah exclaimed:
"Hades was embittered when it encountered Thee in the lower regions."

[...]

O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and no one dead remains in a tomb!

For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first-fruits of them that have slept.
To Him be glory and might unto the ages of ages.

Amen. 

The mind incarnate they cannot confine

I know I've been a bit Wendell Berry-poetry-heavy of late...but its just so good.  One more, for good measure:

After the slavery of the body, dumbfoundment 
of the living flesh in the order of spending 
and wasting, then comes the enslavement 
of consciousness, the incarnation of mind 
in machines.  Once the mind is reduced
to the brain, then it falls within the grasp 
of the machine.  It is the mind incarnate 
in the body, in community, and in the earth 
that they cannot confine.  The difference 
is love;  the difference is grief and joy. 
Remember the body's pleasure and its sorrow.
Remember its grief at the loss of all it knew.
Remember its redemption in suffering 
and in love.  Remember its resurrection 
on the last day, when all made things 
that have not refused this passage 
will return, clarified, each fully being 
in the being of all.  Remember the small 
secret creases of the earth--the grassy, 
the wooded, and the rocky--that the water 
has made, finding its way.  Remember 
the voices of the water flowing.  Remember 
the water flowing under the shadows
of the trees, of the tall grasses, of the stones.  
Remember the water striders walking over 
the surface of the water as it flowed.  
Remember the great sphere of the small 
wren's song, through which the water flowed 
and the light fell.  Remember, and come to rest 
in light's ordinary miracle.  

-Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1999), p. 118.

Let us look in anticipation for that last day--that day of return, clarity, and fullness of being. 

Though he slay me

How do you explain the interplay between God's sovereignty and our responsibility in the midst of suffering?

Says Job,

Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face. (13:15)

Indeed,

Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life... (John 6:34)

Google mapping the end of man

Check out this nice piece from Mockingbird on some of the gains and losses that come along with the really spectacular technology of Google maps.

A snippet:

...this is the gist of Walker Percy's critique of modernity, that our age has lost humankind's God-given sovereignty or, better yet, that our age has shipped off our capabilities to Experts in the Field...this loss of sovereignty feigns sovereignty: even in the remotest canyons, I can find me, my blue blinking dot.  I have the illusion of control that I bought (happily) from Google, Inc.

Creation, Fall, Redemption in two poems

See Gen. 1-3, and the following:

To sit and look at light-filled leaves

May let us see or seem to see,

Far backward as through clearer eyes

To what unsighted hope believes: 

The blessed conviviality

That sang Creation's seventh sunrise

Time when the Maker's radiant sight

made radiant every thing He saw,

And every thing he saw was filled

With perfect joy and life and light.

His perfect pleasure was sole law;

No pleasure had become self-willed.

For all His creatures were His pleasures

And their whole pleasure was to be 

What He made them; they sought no gain

Or growth beyond their proper measures,

Nor longed for change or novelty.

The only new thing could be pain.

Also see 1 Cor. 15, and the following:

What hard travail God does in death!

He strives in sleep, in our despair, 

And all flesh shudders underneath

The nightmare of his sepulcher.

The earth shakes, grinding its deep stone;

All night the cold wind heaves and pries;

Creation strains sinew and bone

Against the dark door where He lies.

The stem bent, pent in seed, grows straight

And stands.  Pain breaks in song.  Surprising

The merely dead, graves fill with light

Like opened eyes.  He rests in rising. 

-Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir, "1979: III," "1980: I."

When what was made has been unmade

A gracious Sabbath stood here while they stood
Who gave our rest a haven.
Now fallen, they are given
To labor and distress.
These times we know much evil, little good
To steady us in faith
And comfort when our losses press
Hard on us, and we choose, 
In panic or despair or both,
To keep what we will lose.

For we are fallen like the trees, our peace
Broken, and so we must
Love where we cannot trust,
Trust where we cannot know,
And must await the wayward-coming grace
That joins living and dead,
Taking us where we would not go--
Into the boundless dark.
When what was made has been unmade
The Maker comes to do His work.

-Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1999), p. 74.

Which way to the master?

My lot is to approach thee with godly fear and humble confidence, for thy condescension equals thy grandeur, and thy goodness is thy glory.

[...]

This is the foundation of my hope, the refuge of my safety, the new and living way to thee, the means of that conviction of sin, brokenness of heart, and self-despair, which will endear to me the gospel.  

[...]

May every part of my character and conduct make a serious and amiable impression on others, and impel them to ask the way to the Master.

-Valley of Vision, "Confidence".

The blood of Christ, neat

The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, 200-proof grace--of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly.  The word of the Gospel--after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself to heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps--suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started...Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.

-Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 114-115.

See John 4:14, and drink your fill of Jesus, our Redeemer who has come to take back what is his.

Celebrity roommate

Ty Simmons, the face of Covenant Seminary, with whom I happen to live, has written an excellent guest post on Trevin Wax's blog over on The Gospel Coalition.  You'd do well to read it.  A highlight to get you interested:

Here is my confession: I assuage my guilt with beauty.  In my struggles with sin, in my struggles with addictions, in my struggles with inclinations of the heart, I have sought out beauty alone to make me feel better...I do not continue down the narrow path because the beautiful sentence I have just read has atoned for my sin or the music I've been listening to brought me to tears.

[...] 

I long for beauty to save me and she continually proves an impotent savior.  

A writer, he is. 

iPod, YouTube, Wii Play

Check out T. David Gordon's review of Brent Layham's new book iPod, YouTube, Wii Play.  Looks like an helpful discussion of the impact of digital media on Christian discipleship.