Growing in Grace by Praising God

The Apostle Peter drew his second letter to a close with these wise and pastoral words: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” (2 Peter 3:18). The word “grow” is an exhortation and a command, and it implies that if we’re to progress in Christ we must play an active role, by the grace of Christ, in building habits that nurture our progress. Therefore, I am offering a series of posts this spring on eight essential habits that help us to grow in grace. For today, let’s consider the place of praise in the Christian life. 

Paul writes in Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” The three clauses in this verse are often quoted in isolation from one another, but they are in fact designed to be kept together. As Jesus enriches our lives with his Word, by his Spirit, we cannot help but overflow with praise for God through teaching, singing, and thanksgiving. 

As Jesus teaches us his will and ways, we naturally long to share what we’ve learned with others. As he reveals to us more of his beauty and excellence, we naturally long to say and sing our praise, sometimes in the privacy of our hearts and sometimes at the top of our lungs. As he applies his will and ways to our lives, we naturally overflow with specific thanksgiving for who he is and what he’s done. As the Word of Christ becomes our treasure, the expression of praise becomes our pleasure. Indeed, as C. S. Lewis pointed out, the verbalization of joy completes our joy (Reflections on the Psalms). 

Now, having said that, I must add that there is discipline to praise. That is to say, we must discipline ourselves to treasure the words of Christ and receive from the Spirit of Christ day by day. We must sometimes press ourselves to overflow with praise through teaching, singing, and thanksgiving. We must sometimes force ourselves to fix our eyes on him who is the prize of life that we may exalt him in one another’s eyes. Praise is the natural overflow of a heart enamored of Jesus and rich with the Word of Jesus. And praise requires effort, discipline, and perseverance. 

So my exhortation to you today is this: spend some time with Jesus and search your heart in the atmosphere of his grace. How are you doing with regard to his Word—is it dwelling in you richly or poorly? Are you overflowing with praise through teaching, singing, and thanksgiving? How can you grow in discipline with regard to these things? May Jesus grant us the passion and power to grow in the grace and knowledge of him, and to overflow with the praise of him all the days of our lives. Lord, hear our prayer!

Living by Faith: The Faith of Sarah

As it was with Abraham, so it was with his precious bride, Sarah. The author of Hebrews could have said so many things about her life of faith but he focuses our attention on the conception of Isaac which took place when Sarah was eighty-nine years old. “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Hebrews 11:11). This is not a fable, it’s a true story, and it was just as impossible then as it is now for an eighty-nine-year-old woman to become pregnant. But that’s exactly what happened by the grace of God because Sarah believed in the specific words of God. Sarah believed that he who promised is faithful. 

Sarah clung to the things God said, along with her husband, for some twenty-four years. She believed and prayed and did what she could to apply her faith. Sometimes she and Abraham made big mistakes because they thought they had to help God fulfill his word, and while we shouldn’t commend them for this, we can at least admire the fact that they took the words of God seriously. By God’s grace, when the time was full, Sarah’s persistent faith in the speech of God caused her to be with child at the age of eighty-nine and to bear a son at the age of ninety. Sarah’s persistent faith in the words of God led her to taste the joy of God as he fulfilled his promises in his own time and way. 

Now, those of you who know Sarah’s story well might object and say that Sarah isn’t the most stunning example of faith in the Bible, for after all, when the Lord appeared and told her at the age of eighty-nine that she would have a child within one year, she laughed. And she didn’t laugh for joy, rather, she laughed because she doubted the words of the Lord. She laughed because she was afraid to believe. She laughed because she had been living with the deep pain of one who waited long on the promises of God. As Solomon later wrote in Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” and indeed Sarah’s heart was very sick. So again, you might object and say that we really shouldn’t look to Sarah as a model of faith but I would say two things in return. 

On the one hand, we must understand that Sarah’s laughter came after twenty-four years of actively clinging to and waiting on the promises of God, and sometimes living by faith is very painful. Sometimes waiting on the Lord is just plain excruciating. We believe in the Lord and in his words, but then the things we’ve been hoping for don’t come to pass, and they don’t come to pass, and they don’t come to pass. Eventually we get so discouraged and filled with pain that every reiteration of the promise feels like a knife piercing into our hearts. This is where Sarah was in her life and I think we need to have compassion toward her. 

When God, for the seventh time, promised that she would soon be with child, Sarah’s heart cried out, “Stop it, God, please stop it! I know you mean well but your words are killing me! Your words are hurting me! Please stop it!” This is what Sarah was feeling when she laughed—it wasn’t that she didn’t believe God, it was just that she hurt so bad, and who can blame her? Would you believe God if he told you, after so many years of waiting, that you would have a child at eighty-nine years old? I think we need to have compassion and give Sarah some space to vent. God did. 

On the other hand, despite the pain of faith that was there in Sarah’s life, she did walk in obedience to the promises of God. I don’t want to be inappropriate here, but what I mean is that Sarah did what was necessary for a woman to become pregnant and she did it in faith. I don’t know what her attitude was at the time and I don’t think it’s all that important, rather, what’s important is that she believed in God and took action on the basis of his promises. Sometimes that’s what genuine faith looks like. It acts despite the intensity of the pain. Beloved, not many eighty-nine-year-old women go to bed with their ninety-nine-year-old spouses at all, much less think that they’re going to be able to have intimacy, much less think that they’re going to become pregnant. But that’s what Sarah and Abraham did by faith not fantasy, feelings, or foolishness. That’s what they did by believing against all odds that God would do exactly what he said he would do. 

In the next post in this series I’m going to write about the fruit of Sarah’s faith, but for now I want to encourage you to join me in pondering her life with Abraham, the pain she experienced in waiting on God, and the faith she expressed by obeying God despite the pain. As we ponder these things, I pray that God will minister to our hearts and teach us what it means to live by faith in the faithfulness of God. 

Book Review: “Effective First-Person Biblical Preaching” (By J. Kent Edwards)

J. Kent Edwards. Effective First-Person Biblical Preaching. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005. 

J. Kent Edwards is a seasoned preacher who desires to help other preachers “preach the stories of Scripture in an irresistible, unforgettable, life-transforming fashion, and to do so without theological compromise…[for] if we cannot captivate people’s minds, we will never capture their souls” (12). He is convinced that first-person preaching is the best way to communicate such stories and thus he begins his book by offering a number of reasons why this is so, behind which is the conviction that the form of the Bible (i.e., the genre) is as inspired as the content and must therefore be honored in the style of preaching. 

As a good student of Haddon Robinson, Edwards then divides the labor of developing first-person sermons into the exegetical task and the homiletical task, however, he focuses on narrative texts which does make his treatment somewhat unique. Part one of the book, then, focuses on the exegetical task and offers an eight step process by which this can be accomplished. Part two focuses on the homiletical task and suggests a fifteen step process by which this can be accomplished. And while the reader may question this or that part of his overall twenty-three-step process, he must certainly agree with Edwards’ aim: to create narrative sermons that “convey exactly the same idea and emotional impact as the biblical story” (76). 

Edwards draws the book to a close by addressing a number of questions about first-person preaching, suggesting seven alternatives styles for presenting narrative texts, and providing several example sermons and useful worksheets. 

The strongest aspect of Edwards’ book is the argument he makes for the inspiration, value, and importance of biblical narratives. After reading the first couple of chapters I was convinced that not to preach these stories as stories is sin because they comprise so much of the Bible. Surely God did not falter in his choice of genre. I’m not sure I agree that first-person preaching is the best way to present narrative texts but his insistence upon this method does not diminish the strength of his broader argument. 

The weakest aspect of his book is that he does not adequately deal with the potential pitfalls of employing creative means to present the “the big idea” of a story. In fact, I must admit that I was surprised by how easily he left the details of the text behind when enumerating the various ways one can preach a narrative text. He seems to imply that once the preacher has discerned the “big idea” of the story, he’s free to present that idea in any way he’d like, even if it’s wrapped up in a completely different story (see his comments on “parabolic preaching” and “refurbished stories,” 137-42). However, the particular details of a story that lead up to and follow from “the big idea” matter very much and the preacher cannot simply dismiss them as window-dressing when he develops the flow of the sermon. 

I am certain that Edwards has a high regard for the text of Scripture and that he does not mean to demean it in any way, but I do think his book would be stronger if he gave more thought, and wrote a chapter, about the potential pitfalls of creative preaching and how to avoid them.

Growing in Grace by the Word of God

The Apostle Peter drew his second letter to a close with these wise and pastoral words: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” (2 Peter 3:18). The word “grow” is an exhortation and a command, and it implies that if we’re to progress in Christ we must play an active role, by the grace of Christ, in building habits that nurture our progress. Therefore, I am offering a series of posts on eight essential habits that help us to grow in grace. For today, let’s consider the place of the Word in the Christian life. 

Isaiah wrote, “The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught” (Isaiah 50:4). 

The longing of our God and Father is to draw near to his children morning by morning, opening our eyes to his glory and our hearts to his mercy. He wants to use his Word, by his Spirit, to lavish his love upon us that we might lavish his love upon others. For it is in receiving mercy that we’re able to give mercy, in receiving wisdom that we’re able to give wisdom, in receiving encouragement that we’re able to give encouragement, in receiving blessing that we’re able to be a blessing. 

Therefore, our Father most lovingly calls us to allow the word of Christ to dwell richly in us (Colossians 3:16). His heart is not that we would legalistically hear, read, study, memorize, meditate on, apply, and teach the word. No, his heart is that we would seek him, that we would long for him to draw near to us and minister to us and transform us into his image, and that we would share in his joy and become a blessing to others. 

So whatever place the Word of God has in your life right now, I want to challenge you to press on and let the word of Christ dwell in you all the more richly. Grow in the daily habits of hearing, reading, studying, memorizing, meditating on, applying, and teaching the Word of God. But as you do, remember that the aim of pressing on in the Word is to connect, heart to heart, with our Father. Mere reading and such will do us no good. 

Indeed, let's remember the words of Isaiah: “The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught” (Isaiah 50:4). 

Living by Faith: The Faith of Abraham

The author of Hebrews could have said so many things about Abraham and his life of faith, and therefore we need to understand that he focuses our attention on a few things because he wants us to see a pattern in his life that will teach us to live by faith. So first, in 11:8, he draws our attention to Abraham’s obedience. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” 

In Genesis 12:1-4, Moses writes, “Now the Lord said to Abram [notice that the words of God are in view here], ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ So [on the basis of the words of God] Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran” (emphasis mine). 

Notice, first of all, that the word of God spoken to Abraham is what caused him to leave everything familiar and go to a country he did not know. Indeed, Abraham didn’t even know the general location of that country. He didn’t even know what peoples lived there. He didn’t even know the general climate of the region. He didn’t know what natural resources were there. He knew nothing about that country. But he did know this: God had spoken and instructed him to pack up all of his possessions and gather everyone who was under his authority and walk with them for what ended up to be seven-hundred-fifty miles. Again, Abraham was willing to do this not because he had some flight of fantasy or because he was moved by some powerful emotion but simply because God had spoken very specific words to him and he believed those words. He believed the Lord. This is so important, Friends, because it teaches us that faith doesn’t spring out of nowhere but that faith emerges as we trust in the specific speech of God. Faith looks to God and clings to his words; this is how it operates. 

Now, when we think carefully about Genesis 12:1-4 we see that the Lord gave Abraham one command and several promises. The command is in verse 1 and it’s very simple: “Go!” Leave this place and go to some other place that I’ll identify later. The promises are found every time you read the words “I will,” and in the interest of time I won’t reiterate them for you. But please notice these promises because they become the content of faith for Abraham and his family after him for generations to come, in fact, down to our own day. God spoke, Abraham believed in the person and words of God, and by grace he lived his life accordingly. This is how faith operates. 

Turning our attention back to Hebrews 11, we see in verse 9 that in faith and obedience Abraham went out and took many with him. “By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise” (Hebrews 11:9). In other words, Abraham trusted in the words of God and lived his life accordingly. Once he arrived in the land of Canaan and the Lord told him to settle down there, he was so convinced by the truthfulness of the words of God that he was willing to live in tents from the age of seventy-five until the day of his death. Please let that sink in: we live in apartments and houses and relative luxury. Abraham and his family lived in tents for many decades because they believed the specific words of God spoken to him. 

Indeed, as the Bible says, Abraham essentially lived as a wanderer and resident-alien all the days of his life. He never had earthly roots in an earthly place like so many of us desire, and this was specifically because he believed in the promises of God and he “was looking forward [into the future, not to the present] for a city whose designer and builder was God” (11:10). The author doesn’t tell us what he means by this just yet, but he will soon enough.

For now, this is his point: Abraham heard, believed, and obeyed the words of God. This is what it means to live by faith and I pray that we’ll have ears to hear. I pray that we’ll seek God by his Word, listen and believe, and then follow in his ways by his power and grace. This is how faith operates.

Book Review: “The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages” (By Beryl Smalley)

Beryl Smalley. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). 

The aim of this book is to show how, despite the predominance of the four-fold sense of Scripture as an exegetical assumption and method, the literal-historical sense of Scripture rose to prominence throughout the middle ages, from about A.D. 700 to about A.D. 1300. This is an advanced text and assumes that the reader possesses a more than rudimentary knowledge of medieval history and culture, church tradition and structure, and a basic knowledge of Latin, French, and German (Smalley often uses non-English terms and sentences without translating or explaining them). 

Smalley commences her fine work with a brief treatment of the patristic fathers who most influenced the middle ages, namely, Origen, Jerome, Augustine, and to a lesser extent Bede. She then analyzes the complex array of ideas, institutions and personalities as embodied in several circles throughout this period where biblical studies most flourished. She concludes that the literal-historical sense of Scripture rose to prominence in the later portions of this period because of the shift of exegetical locus from the congregation to the academy or the monastery, the influence of Aristotelian thought via Thomas Aquinas, the novel interest in the natural world and the development of various sciences related thereto, and the complex ebb and flow of the discovery and loss of vital and influential texts. She “predicts” that the following period (i.e., the Renaissance) will be characterized by the sharp rise of critical scholarship and the corollary suspicion of, and attack upon, mysticism. 

While Smalley is quick to point out the inadequacies of her work, she has undoubtedly made a significant contribution to the understanding of the practice of hermeneutics in the Middle Ages, and I strongly recommend this work to anyone interested in the subject.

Growing in the Grace and Knowledge of Christ

Do you want to grow in love for Jesus? Do you long to experience more of his grace day by day? Do you desire for your life to bring glory to Christ? Most Christians will, of course, answer “yes” to these questions, but I want to encourage you to join me in searching our hearts to see if our “yes” really means “yes.” Are we willing to take up our cross daily and die to anything that stands in the way of our progress in Christ? Are we willing to sell everything we have in order to gain him? 

The Apostle Peter drew his second letter to a close with these wise and pastoral words: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen” (2 Peter 3:18). Beloved, this is an exhortation from an elder brother in Christ, and it’s also a command. The word “grow” is in the imperative mood which means that it’s a directive. Peter is saying to people he loves very much, “Forsake the fading pleasures of this world and make every effort to pursue Christ” (see 1 Peter 1:5-11). 

So I ask again: do you long for growth, grace, and the glory of Christ in your life? If you answered “yes,” then know that you will have to play an active role, by the grace of Christ, in building habits that nurture this longing. We cannot sit idly by and expect to grow, rather, we must apply ourselves according to the will and wisdom of God. 

Therefore, over the next several weeks, I’ll be offering a series of posts on eight essential habits that create an atmosphere of growth in our lives. These habits do not, in themselves, cause us to grow in Christ, but they are tools and fertilizer in the hands of the God who does cause us to grow. 

Specifically, I will to write about the Word of God, praise, prayer, fasting, giving, community life, evangelism, and mercy ministry. As you read these posts each week, please join me in the quest to understand what our Father is asking of us and why, and in the effort to apply his wisdom to our lives by the grace and power of Christ. Those who hear and do the will of God will be blessed indeed!