Reading Notes for Introduction and Chapters 1-5.

Reading Notes for Chapters 6-9.

Reading Notes for Chapters 10-13.

Chapter 14 – Discipline of Church

• There is a contemporary problem: doctrine of church is weak, i.e., what the author calls “ecclesiastical hitchhikers” (p. 169) – no meaningful commitment and no meaningful participation.
• Visible/Invisible Church distinction is real. However, we must have a high view of Visible Church; must have a biblical view of the objectivity of the covenant.
• “As to why the Church has fallen on such hard times, historians tell us that an overemphasis on the “invisible” Body of Christ by evangelical leaders produced an implicit disregard for the visible Church. However, membership in an invisible Church without participation in its local expression is never contemplated in the New Testament” (p. 170).
• The author quotes from the Swiss Second Helvetic Confession: “For as there was no salvation outside Noah’s ark when the world perished in the flood; so we believe that there is no certain salvation outside Christ, who offers himself to be enjoyed by the elect in the Church; and hence we teach that those who wish to live ought not to be separated from the true Church of Christ (Chapter 27)” (p. 171).
• And from the Westminster Confession of Faith: “The visible church . . . out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (Chapter 25.2).
• Together we are “co-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17). “In the Church we do more than come into each other’s presence—we share membership together” (p. 172).
• Therefore, be committed to the visible church (cf. p. 175).
• From the “Food for Thought” section: “What do our attitudes toward church and toward Christ have to do with each other? If the latter is misguided, will the former do any good?” (p. 177)
• From the “Think About It!” section: “List as many strengths and weaknesses as you see in your church. Now write down the ways you personally are contributing to each of these, and also specific ways you can be part of changing the weaknesses” (p. 177).

Chapter 16 – Discipline of Giving

• History again and again reveals that men are mastered by their wealth, e.g., see story spanning from 1923 to 1948 (p. 191).
• How to avoid this? “The grace of giving” (p. 193).
• “Giving” in the OT (pp. 192-194). All those percentages add up.
• “Giving in the NT (p. 194-195). “Their [the poor Macedonians] remarkable giving was the result of their first giving themselves to God. It is so simple: when all one has is given to God, giving to others becomes the natural reflex of the soul. . . . This is where grace giving must begin – giving ourselves completely to God. Grace giving cannot exists without this (cf. Romans 12:1)” (p. 195).
• We are not “clubbed” into giving. We are grateful because Christ gave all for us. We are united to Christ, who gave all, therefore, we bear fruit (grace of giving). The Lord’s Service is corporate discipleship that “forms” us; God serves us in the Lord’s Service (e.g., called into his presence, our sins are forgiven, washes us in Word, feeds us at Table, sends us out strengthened to get dominion in the world through/by service).

Chapter 17 – Discipline of Witness

• Witnessing – “average” avenues of everyday person-to-person witness (all can do this regardless of gifting or calling), see p. 202.
• An example: Andrew brought others to Christ (pp. 203-207). Author’s comments on Andrew’s ministry were compelling.
• We need to realize the “value of relationships” – it takes (1) time, (2) effort, (3) emotional investment, etc. See p. 209 for ideas/examples for how to invest in relationships.

Chapter 18 – Discipline of Ministry

• Disciplined in:
• Labor: Labor for Christ and Church. “Big hearts, the enlarged hearts that God uses, are laboring hearts which, though weary, will willingly be expended as necessary” (p. 215). See 1 Thessalonians 2:9 and 2 Corinthians 11:27 – laboring night and day; laboring in all types of afflictions–this is persistent labor.
• To Reach Out: Example of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4). You cross barriers, you radically hurdle the conventional barriers of today, etc. Humbly goes after even “least of these.”
• In Perspective: Learn to look at world through ministry/servant eyes. See spiritual opportunities. Be attentive/sensitive to the leading of the Spirit, e.g., while driving in a car the Spirit lays it upon you to pray for a passing car, etc. So, look for spiritual potential – “part of an eternal drama in which each Christian has a special part to play” (p. 218). What is my calling? What is my perspective? What am I supposed to do? Etc. God has called each of us to participate meaningfully in the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Within the household of God, circumcised foreskins never trump circumcised hearts. If a grazed woodlot is neither good woodlot nor good grazing, the halfway covenant is neither good covenant nor good halfway. The Lutheran priest who promises his baptism or Lord’s Supper actually does something, and that something is eternal salvation, is lying through his teeth. Wise souls will run for their lives! (BaylyBlog)

Happy 450th Birthday anniversary to Shakespeare. To celebrate Mashable compiled some of Shakespeare’s greatest jabs. “I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed.” 

We say that we would like to be more like God. So be more thrilled with moonlight. And babies. And what makes them. And holding on to one lover until you’ve both been aged to wine, ready to pour. Holiness is nothing like a building code. Holiness is 80-year-old hands crafting an apple pie for others, again. It is aspen trees in a backlit breeze. It is fire on the mountain.   — N.D. Wilson (from “God the Merrymaker” from CT, April 2014)

We should strive for holiness, but holiness is a flood, not an absence. Are you the kind of parent who can create joys for your children that they never imagined wanting? Does your sun shine, warming the faces of others? Does your rain green the world around you? Do you end your days with anything resembling a sunset? Do you begin with a dawn?   — N.D. Wilson (from “God the Merrymaker” from CT, April 2014)

I’ve made brief notes before here and here about the growth of Christianity in China. Recently Peter Leithart summarizes an article over at The Telegraph which states China is on course to become ‘world’s most Christian nation within 15 years.’ From the article:

“Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this,” Prof Yang said. “It’s ironic — they didn’t. They actually failed completely.”

Communism writes off (persecutes) religion wholesale. But perhaps in God’s providence the evil that is communism is merely a tool that God is using to graze cultural idolatrous woodlots, i.e., a type of pagan clear-cutting; Communism is the “Emerald Ash Borer” of the forest-that-is-paganism. So now the seed of the Gospel can be planted and new Psalm 1- “righteous man” tree farms can be cultivated? Perhaps. What the communists intended for evil the Triune Lord intended for good.

I’m guessing Christian China is singing Psalm 2 with zeal.  

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? 

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the 

LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 

Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. 

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. 

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. 

Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. 

I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. 

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. 

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. 

Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. 

Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

Our Father wove glory and joy into every layer of this world. He wove in secrets that would tease us into centuries of risk-taking before we could unlock them–flight, glass, electricity, chocolate. He buried gold deep, but scattered sand everywhere. And from the sand came all the wealth of our own age.   — N.D. Wilson (from “God the Merrymaker” from CT, April 2014)

Adam bore the image of God and was man’s federal representative. Adam rebelled against God, however, the rebellion-sin did not destroy but only defaced the imago Dei. So now man’s nature has been corrupted by the imputation of the ethical disease of sin (Romans 5:12).

God, however, promised that from the seed of the woman a new federal representative and image bearer of God would be sent to restore the defaced imago Dei of the progeny of the First Adam. This “seed” who brings the grace-gift of Salvation-Eternal Life is the Second Adam the God-Man Jesus Christ (Romans 5:8, 17; 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45). God has demonstrated in the Second Adam his love in full (John 3:16; Romans 5:8). Easter Sunday is a celebration of God’s love in full–we celebrate because we know that if having been united to Jesus by the gift of saving faith through the work of the Holy Ghost, and that having gone down with Jesus in his death, so too we shall rise with Jesus in that decisive victory of Resurrection, when the Father proclaimed that Jesus Christ the Son of God was the Salvation-King of fellow-man (Psalm 2; Psalm 110). At the Table of Fellowship Christians gather to partake of Christ’s body and blood which are a Testament of a greater covenant, the Covenant of Grace declared in Genesis 3:15; it is the New Covenant by which God is restoring the World to goodness through His Resurrection.

Christians never look to the Cross with fear but rather with hopeful remembrance: Christians believe that the hungry lion-of-death that consumed our Lord is no longer worthy of being feared because God through Jesus Christ has transformed death into a salvation-making carcass so that now out of the eater came forth meat / out of the strong came forth sweetness (Judges 14:14), i.e., out of the cruel-strength that is death comes sweetness. Salvation that came out of the Death of Christ is as sweet to you as is honey. Death is victory-less. Death is sting-less. Christians believe in the death of death in the death of Christ. Christian living is paradoxical, believing death is the consummation of Eternal Life.

Discussing Herman Melville’s literary genius exemplified in the writing of Moby Dick, Robert Alter reflects on how Melville broke through the literary stylistic boundaries of that time while under the influence of the powerful prose of the King James Version of the Bible.

This ambition to turn the language of the novel into prose-poetry is a distinctly American project; there is nothing quite like it in British fiction till the advent of modernism. In saying this, and, indeed, in my general account of the presence of the King James Version in American prose, I do not mean to make any larger claim about the much debated issue of American exceptionalism. There are certainly some characteristics traits of American culture that look distinctive, but they do not necessarily encompass the culture as a whole and they are not necessarily unique. It suffices for my argument that the phenomena I describe are particularly at home in the American settings and  are not readily imaginable elsewhere. In regard to the bold polyphony of Melville’s prose that is inseparable from its purposefully poetic character, it should be stressed that there is considerable correspondence between the actual allusions to earlier writers and components of style drawn from them. The single figure of Ahab is compound of literary allusions. He resembles King Ahab not only as evil monarch but in his heroic defiance: King Ahab at the end, bleeding to death, asks to be propped up in his chariot so that he can continue to do battle, just as Melville’s Ahab at the end, blinded, his boat splintered, persists in the fierce struggle against his terrible foe (“from hell’s heart I stab at thee”). Ahab is also Job, bitterly arguing against what he sees as the skewed moral order of creation, and he is even the blighted generation in the wilderness (“forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea!”). At the same time, Ahab is also Milton’s Satan and both Macbeth and Lear. What needs to be kept in mind is that Melville summons up for his own novelistic purposes not only the lineaments of these sundry figures but elements of the poetic language in which they are etched in the texts where they originally appear” (Robert Alter, Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible, 65-66).