The Vapour of this Little Time

‘The Entombment’ by Daniele Crespi 1620’s

“For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time,
and then vanisheth away.” James 4:14 (AV)

I write within 24 hours of the death of a friend. I write on New Year’s Eve. I inflate my connection by calling him my friend. I think we only ever talked about Kentucky basketball. I was pastor to his missionary family during their Budapest years. He died when his truck left the road early yesterday morning in Atlanta. He was twenty-two. He knew the Lord Christ savingly. Dear God, what a difference that makes.

When we contemplate the Being of God we are inevitably staggered by mysteries, complexities, impossibilities. Eternity, Infinity, Trinity. Try wrapping your brain around that. Yet the moral dimension of God’s character is also a mystery to fallen flesh. Our vantage point is clouded. Our judgment is corrupt. The primary theological enterprise in the moral realm is the accommodation of our understanding of divine goodness to our experience of human pain. Grace is sorely needed. We would like more answers. We would like more faith. It is harder to be orthodox when our hearts are crushed.

I knew another young man, the son of intimate friends, who died in 2009. It is a fellowship with God, a stewardship from God which no one wants, this business of losing sons.

God will not prove His love for us by preventing the suffering or death of someone we love. I did not say He would not protect those we love. Is there anyone we care about still alive and prospering? It is because God protects them. We believe in Providence. I said God will not prove His love to us by Providence.

I did not say we cannot ask God to protect those we love. We believe in prayer. I said that God will not prove His love for us by answered prayer.

I make these emphatic declarations for the simple reason that God proves His love in a way quite different. He proves His love by refusing to protect the One He loves.

“He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all,
will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” Romans 8:32

To doubt God’s love when those we care about are taken is to deem the crucifixion of God’s only Son an insufficient demonstration of favor. Of course we don’t mean to. But sorrow is a suffocating thing.

Probably the greatest thing, the hardest thing, we trust God with is who dies first and who dies next. The best man in the world once cried out,
“O my son, Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom!
Would God that I had died instead of thee…” 2 Samuel 18:33

We want to insist that heaven be adorned exclusively with the aged. We want to, but we can’t.

If I knew what God knows, and I do not, and if I were good, and I am not, I would do what God does. I would allow what God allows.

2009 is soon gone.
So shall our lives be.
It is therefore all the more urgent that we secure a life which cannot be forfeited.
A life purchased by the Dread Ransom of the Blood Royal.
We draw One Year Closer.

The Clothes God Wears

..and she brought forth her first-born Son and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes
Luke 2:7

Clothes are important. Clothes may be an expression of character, an insignia of rank, or an index of economic station. Clothes are also a consequence of the Fall. Practically the first question asked by the first human pair after the Fall was, "What shall we wear?" Of course their solution was inadequate. It was God, newly offended, newly estranged, who provided the covering. Even that covering was temporary. The great theological term 'atonement' is taken from the simple Hebrew word for 'covering.' That first physical covering provided by God for Adam and Eve foreshadowed the spiritual atonement only God Himself could provide.
On the Island of Patmos John sees and reports that the glorified Second Person is "clothed in a robe reaching to His feet and girded about His breast with a golden girdle." (Revelation 1:13) Quite a contrast to the swaddling clothes. The Son of Man came unclothed into the world and had to be covered. The Lord Jesus would make atonement for sinners by becoming a substitute for them. That meant being uncovered Himself.
At the Cross He was stripped.
Before they put Him on the Cross they gave Him a crown of thorns. Before they put Him on the Cross they took His covering. While he hung there they gambled for His clothes. Thorns are an emblem of the curse -another consequence of the Fall. He took the curse upon His head. He gave the covering off His back.
In Bethlehem His back was covered
Deity was swaddled and laid down.
He came to make His blessings flow.
Far as the curse is found.

Mythology and History

A few days ago I was reading an on-line article in the Times of London. It was written by Jeremy Clarkson, a regular who normally writes about automobiles. This time he was writing a review of Bob Dylan’s Christmas CD. Though I was a Bob Dylan fanatic in my (long ago) youth I don’t think I could bring myself to listen to a Bob Dylan Christmas CD.I much admired more than one of Dylan’s early voices but even early on I enjoyed hearing Peter Paul and Mary rescue Bob Dylan’s songs from Bob Dylan’s voice. (We lost Mary Travers in 2009. A lamentable subtraction that.) Still I loved Dylan’s sneering scornful intonations so well suited for classics like Positively Fourth Street and Like a Rolling Stone. Dylan’s voice has significantly degenerated over the years (a thing Jane always maintained was impossible). Now, in my dotage, I can’t bear the thought of Silent Night in any of Dylan’s voices though I’m glad he at least wants to do something for Christmas.
But it’s Clarkson I’m interested in at the moment not Dylan. And Jeremy Clarkson regards both Dylan and Christmas with boundless cynicism. He insists that most people (right thinking people which of course includes himself) regard all the Christmas nonsense as a fairy-tale. He may be correct to insist that most of our contemporaries regard the biblical account in just that way. But he embraces error if he takes his stand with the majority.
Fairy tales usually begin something like this:
Long ago and far away…
But this story starts out when Caesar Augustus (63 BC-14 AD) was Emperor of Rome. To narrow it down a bit more it was during that part of Augustus’ reign when Quirinius (51 BC-21AD) was governor of Syria. I‘m aware that there is a controversy about the date of Quirinius’ rule. If you are aware of the controversy I subscribe to the two term solution. Then there is the matter of place. It happened in Bethlehem. Travel south-east from Rome. When you reach latitude 31 degrees 05 North and Longitude 34 degrees 48East you're in Jerusalem. Hang a right and take the road south. Almost anyone will be able to tell you which road. Five miles and you're there. It's a real place.
Have you ever noticed how some of the most apparently impossible (all miracles are impossible without God. That's part of what 'miracle' means) of Jesus' miracles are either public (e.g. the feeding of the 5000) or are amply fortified with authenticating detail? Surely the greatest miracles are the resurrections. Apart from Jesus' own resurrection we have three reports in the Gospel accounts. You will recall the case of Jairus’ daughter. Jairus was a synagogue ruler in Galilee. Synagogue rulers in Galilee were not exactly thick on the ground back then. (There were probably only about 50 houses in first century Nazareth). If the report were false it would have been easily repudiated. Then there was the widow of Nain’s son. Nain was a tiny village. There could have been only one widow there about that time whose son predeceased her. If such an event took place every resident of Nain would have known all about it. It would have been madness to make the thing up if it didn't happen. Then there was the raising of Lazarus. Not everyone in Jerusalem would have known someone in Bethany (though it was quite close by), but it’s a good bet everyone in Bethany would have known someone in Jerusalem. And everyone in Bethany would have known either Mary or Martha or Lazarus. If it were claimed that Lazarus was raised from the dead, and he was not, in fact raised, it would have been a particularly damaging lie, a lie useless to perpetuate. If these claims were lies why were enough details supplied to make it possible for the claims to be disproved? In 1872 a German archaeological team digging in Bethany unearthed a family burial crypt 18 centuries old. The tomb was sealed. Upon the seal were three names: Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Fairy tales do not normally leave artifacts in the ground.
But back to the birth narrative. For a skeptic, among the most difficult things to choke down in the Creation and Nativity accounts are the claims about Eve and Mary. At the beginning of the Old Testament sin entered the world because the first woman was deceived by the devil and did his bidding. The New Testament begins when a Virgin girl supernaturally conceives without male agency and gives birth to a Child who is, in fact, the Son of God. By secular reasoning it’s a pretty far stretch on the face of it. But let’s not leave it at a superficial level. If the two accounts are myths why is the import of the second myth so contradictory to the first myth? What possible motive or mindset originated and perpetuated the contradiction? What I mean by contradiction is simply this. Women were universally marginalized and trivialized in the ancient world. This was painfully true among the Jews even until comparatively recent times. One of the three things a pious Jew thanked God for was that he was not a woman. That it was naïveté on the part of a woman which effected the entrance of sin into the world is not surprising even if we regard the story as mythological. But what of Mary’s role in birthing Jesus? SHE brought forth HER first born. The woman is the star. Not THEIR first born HER first born. I am Protestant. I do not believe it is either desirable or wise to assign to Mary a role larger than what Scripture declares, but even by the most modest Protestant estimates her stature is gigantic. See how Woman is elevated. See how spectacularly God’s favor rests upon her in contradistinction to the males in the cast of players. See how she shines. But whence cometh this shining? And why? Of course it seems a commonplace role for a woman in our feminist generation but in first century Jewish culture it constitutes a glaring anachronism. Unless...unless the provenance of the story is neither naturalistic nor mythological.
And it was not. Nor could it have been.

The Festival of the Born King (Part 2)

Where is He Who is BORN the King of the Jews?
Matthew 2:2

This is an elaboration of the theme for the Christmas reflection of 2008 slightly different, somewhat expanded. We never get to the end of this story do we?

Even David was not born King of the Jews. Nor Saul nor Solomon. Hardly anyone is actually BORN a King. Hardly anyone at all.
Victoria was not born a Queen. She became Queen a month after her 18th birthday. When she was born George III was on the throne. Her son Edward VII was not born a King. When he was born his mother was on the throne. She was also on the throne when her grandson and great grandson George V and George VI were born. No one is born a King or Queen. You must wait. One day, when it's time, he or she ascends the throne.
Herod was a tyrant with strong views about who should be King. He believed there should be no successors on the horizon or in the imagination. His two unusually winsome sons, Alexander and Aristobolus not only made a great impression in the provinces but were justly celebrated in Rome as well. Their celebrity flamed the paranoia of a father who dispatched them with assassins. His own sons! Can you imagine entering Jerusalem to extol a fresh rival to Herod? Herod was not born a King. He was not even born a Jew. He was an Idumean. He converted to Judaism to make his reign more palatable. He kept a Kosher table. It was said that Herod's pigs were more safe than Herod's sons (a play on words in Greek).
Only faith or courage or ignorance or insanity would have moved anyone to enter Jerusalem to inquire about another King, a higher King, a King born as King. These Magi were moved by divine impulse. They sought a King attended by stars
There was only one King Who brought a Crown to His birth. There was only one Who stooped to a human throne, One Who condescended.
That King bartered power for weakness with informed consent fully apprised of consequences.
That King was born in Bethlehem.
Born on Christmas Day.

Birthday of a Phenomenon

Martyn Lloyd-Jones (December 19, 1899-March 1, 1981)

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was born this day in Cardiff 110 years ago, the year Dwight L. Moody died. In my opinion he was the greatest expository preacher in English in the 20th Century. He was one of three sons born to Henry Lloyd-Jones a Welsh dairyman who moved his family to London during Martyn's childhood. His story is remarkable because of what he walked away from and the brilliant effectiveness he sustained as an auto-didact. As for ministry preparation he was entirely self-taught with no formal theological training.
He qualified in medicine and a brilliant career loomed. One of the Medical Professors at St. Bartholomew's Hospital where he trained was Lord Thomas Horder the most famous doctor in Britain. Lord Horder was the physician to Prime Ministers and the glitterati of London society. He was also Physician-in-Waiting to the King. His fame rested largely on the fact that as King Edward VII lay dying, in 1910, he called for Lord Horder. During his training M L-J disputed a diagnosis of the great man. L-J was able to make his diagnosis by a manual external probing of the patient’s spleen, something Horder was not able to do. Time proved the student right and the teacher wrong. Though Horder was not a Christian, he responded with magnanimity and invited L-J to join his prestigious Harley Street practice upon graduation. At about the same time (1926) L-J married Bethan Phillips, the only child of a Welsh doctor and a physician in her own right. As women physicians were rare in those days one can only guess at how over-qualified she must truly have been.
Sometime in his student days Martyn Lloyd-Jones came to know Christ personally. A sense of a call to ministry began to grow. One hundred per-cent of his counselors urged him to stay in medicine, though some suggested medical missions. His own pastor at Charing Cross Welsh Chapel assured him that if he had his life to live over he would have been a physician! It was during the Christmas season that the crisis came. Some honeymooning friends from Wales visited the recently married Lloyd-Jones' in London. The two couples decided to attend the Theatre. Exiting the performance a Salvation Army band approached ringing their bells and beating their drums. Some would be understandably embarrassed as the shabbily dressed gospelers drew close to the fashionable West End theatre crowd in their furs and finery. At that moment Martyn Lloyd-Jones realized he KNEW. The juxtaposition of the two competing fellowships was overpowering. Later he compared the experience to the scene in Wagner's Tannhäuser when there is a call from the Pilgrims competing against the pull of the world. Looking upon the down market evangelists M L-Jones said that he realized "These are my people" Looking upon his fellow theatre goers he realized, "These are not my people."
Immediately he resigned his Medical Practice and left London for a struggling Mission Church in a poor Welsh mining town called Aberavon. The decision must have been excruciating because his wife gave up her career as well. It was all the more surprising because they realized later that she wasn't a Christian at the time.
He stayed in Wales for 12 years before becoming G. Campbell-Morgan's co-Pastor at Westminster Chapel in London (near Buckingham Palace) in 1939. He became Senior Minister in 1943. He never had a formal welcome to the church because the weekend he began England declared war on Germany. He never had a formal goodbye because he resigned quickly in 1968 due to impending heart surgery. His ministry was remarkable for many reasons including:
1) He preached the Bible, verse by verse through books, a rare thing in those days. Even Spurgeon hadn't done that.
2) He resurrected and relished the powerfully theologized pulpit emphases of the Reformers and the Puritans whose doctrines he loved and whose holiness he imitated.
3) He was an activist who catalyzed movements. He helped Inter-Varsity in their critical early days. He helped bring the Evangelical Library to London and established the Westminster Conference, an annual lecture series on Puritan history and theology. He encouraged the launch of the Banner of Truth Trust in 1957, the foremost publisher of Puritan and Reformed literature in the world.
4) Although he published little while in active pastoral ministry after his retirement a steady stream of books began to flow.
He was not perfect. He could be hard to get along with. And he could be narrow. One of the first things he did at Westminster Chapel was to abolish the choir. His book Joy Unspeakable (published posthumously without his oversight) shows that even a great mind and arduous study cannot always compensate entirely for a lack of theological training.
But he was a giant and a great man.
He should always be studied.
My own favorites are his expositions of Roman 5 and volume two of Romans 8.
Real experts on his writings usually list ‘Spiritual Depression’ and ‘Studies in the Sermon on the Mount’ in the first rank.
He should always be honored.
It would be hard to imagine 20th Century evangelicalism without him. We would have been much the poorer; of that there can be no doubt.
May God be praised for giving him to the Church.
And may God raise up more like him before it's too late.

Christmas as an Evangelistic Opportunity

Christmas is one of the easiest times to talk about the Lord Jesus. He is, after all, the whole point, though it's easy for the point to be lost in the froth of the inconsequential. If the percentage of Christians who share their faith on a regular basis is a trustworthy gauge, then apparently talking about Jesus is not easy. It's not as if we need a special reason to bring up the Creator of the Universe from time to time with those who owe Him every breath and heartbeat. If we have specific commands from God, do we need special concessions from sinners? I think not. It is not as if the Lord said, “Go out into all the world and wait for the right moment.”
We will do well, though, to consider how best to begin. Many Christians feel the need to engage the unbeliever on neutral ground at first and then hope for a segue which doesn't jar or alienate. May all who opt for indirect approaches be fruitful in evangelistic labor. But a direct approach attracts me most.
"Have you ever heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?" is a question blessed in my generation."If you were to die tonight do you know for certain that you would go to heaven?" is the first of two diagnostic questions made popular by D. James Kennedy. The second question is "What would you say to God if He asked you why He should let you into His heaven?"As an unbeliever Dr. Kennedy heard those words spoken on the radio by a Philadelphia Pastor named Donald Grey Barnhouse. It seems likely that Barnhouse learned the approach from CH Spurgeon who asked the questions to his cab driver in 19th century London. The cabs were pulled by horses in those days. People get along in cabs much faster now. But they still get to heaven or hell at pretty much the same pace and by the same familiar routes. Our apathy or activism may play a role in hastening progress in one direction or another.
"Have you ever thought about becoming a follower of Jesus of Nazareth?" is my own favorite opening. No hidden agenda there. No wasted time. That way the Holy Spirit can bring honor to the Name of Jesus from the outset.
Whether the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’ we follow with "Would you allow me to tell you how I began to follow and why I've never regretted that step?"
If we don't speak of the Lord at Christmas when will we speak of the Lord?
If not now when?
If not ourselves, who then?
How will they believe unless they hear?
Because the Lord has come we go.
I relish all the down-time at Christmas.
But Christ did not come to make us passive.

The Incarnation

;...and the Word became flesh." John 1:14


Less than two weeks until Christmas.
When we were children it pained us that Christmas came so slow. Now that we are adults, it surprises us that it comes so fast.
The Incarnation is a permanent thing.
God Became Man.
When Jesus was born on earth He never ceased to be God. When He ascended into heaven He never ceased to be Man.
It is a Man (God too, of course) who intercedes for us at the Father's right hand.

"For there is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the MAN, Christ Jesus..." (I Timothy 2:5).

Strong comfort that. He was touched by our infirmities. He KNOWS. Not by some remote intellectual knowing but by the knowledge of shared experience. He is Immanuel, God with us. He knows what it is like to live in a fallen place (with 'mosquitoes, tapeworms and rabies' in the words of Vern Poythress' apt summary). He knows us not as an astronomer knows a planet by peering through a telescope. He knows us as a Son knows a family by being conceived in a human womb and sleeping in a crowded room.

He came to set His people free ---far as the curse is found. And the curse is found everywhere.

There is no patch under the sun uncontaminated by the curse of sin. He provides the antidote by swallowing the poison Himself. He tasted death for every man. He was born with us that He might die for us.
And so He did.
O come let us adore Him.
Born the King of Angels.