Apr
2012

Salt and Light

Believers are to be “salt.” Salt works better if it’s scattered. I love salt, but even I don’t like to pour myself a big bowl of salt to eat. When salt is scattered, however, it brings the natural flavors out of food, and can preserve food from going bad too quickly. The people of God should be like this. We are to preserve and we are to add beauty. To do this, we cannot be contained in “Christian community.” We need to be scattered into every dimension of society, promoting justice and equality and mercy. We are to be in every dimension of society (art, music, Hollywood, politics, etc.) preserving, promoting justice, and adding beauty.

Believers are also to be “light.” Light works best when it is gathered. Put yourself in the shoes (or sandals) of a camel rider at the time Jesus preached this sermon. If it’s the middle of the night and you are looking for a place to rest. I’d say there is a better chance that you will be able to see a group of lights from a distance rather than the faint glow of someone’s Yankee Candle in the window. When the people of God are together in love and fellowship, the beauty of their community becomes a bright light, a beacon of hope, for all the world to see. The local church is God’s demonstration community, putting on display in its love for one another the beauty of Christ (John 13:35; Acts 2:42-47; Ephesians 3:10; Matthew 5:16).

via Between The Times.

Apr
2012

The Doctrine of Vocation in the Sermon on the Mount

Seeking the kingdom of God first does not require a life lived apart from the world. Matt Perman wrote a short post about the myth (excerpt follows):

Jesus says “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6).

In the Middle Ages, before the Reformation, it was thought that life was divided into two areas — the “perfect life” and the “permissible life.” Those in “full time Christian service” lived the perfect life, and everyone else was relegated to second class — your life was acceptable, but not most important. If you wanted to live a truly important life, you had to be in “ministry” (which was also conceived of very differently then).

Jesus explodes this error.

He doesn’t do this by saying “the things of the world are as important as the things of God.” The teaching of the Bible is not that there are no priorities in life. Seeking the kingdom of God is the most important thing.

But the revolutionary teaching of Jesus and the Bible is that you don’t have to be a pastor or missionary or full-time Christian worker to do this.

Wherever you are, whatever your job, you can and must seek the kingdom of God first.

via The Doctrine of Vocation in the Sermon on the Mount : What’s Best Next.

Apr
2012

Authority from Ray Ortlund’s blog

“The Rabbis spoke from authority, Jesus with authority.  Those who heard Him ‘were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes’ (Mark 1:22.  C. H. Dodd renders ‘He taught them like a sovereign, and not like the Rabbis’).  W. Manson . . . cites the saying of Justin Martyr, ‘His word was power from God.’  ‘Thus says the Lord’ is typical of the Old Testament, but Jesus’ characteristic expression is ‘Truly, truly, I say to you.’  The difference is significant.  Jesus appealed to no other authority as He spoke to men of the deep things of God.”

Leon Morris, The Lord from Heaven (Downers Grove, 1974), pages 13-14.  Italics his.

via Authority – Ray Ortlund.

Apr
2012

Don Carson’s Meditation on the Suffering Servant

NOW THE IDENTITY OF THE perfect Servant comes into sharp focus. Isaiah 53, or better, Isaiah 52:13–53:12, is the fourth of five Servant songs that describe him. “See, my servant” (Isa. 52:13), God says, echoing the introduction to this Servant in Isaiah 42:1. The “arm of the LORD,” God’s saving power, has been promised in Isaiah 51:9 and 52:10. Now the question becomes, “[T]o whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” (Isa. 53:1). The implicit answer in this high point of Isaiah’s prophecy is that God’s saving power is nowhere more clearly seen than in the work of the Servant. In the previous chapters God has repeatedly promised forgiveness to his people, but its basis has not been established. Here all becomes clear: “my righteous servant will justify many … he will bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11). He is a priest, sprinkling the unclean (Isa. 52:15); he is a guilt offering, removing their iniquities (Isa. 53:10).

The first of five sections (Isa. 52:13–15) anticipates the whole: “My servant will act wisely,” God says, anticipating the conclusion. Beginning with the Servant’s exaltation (Isa. 52:13), this stanza descends to his appalling suffering (Isa. 52:14) and ends with the “sprinkling” of many nations and the stunned reaction to it. “Sprinkling” with blood, oil, or water is in the Old Testament bound up with cleansing, i.e., with making a person or thing fit to come before God. Normally this has reference to Israel or its institutions, but not here: this is for “many nations” (Isa. 52:15). The stunned reaction testifies that God’s wisdom overthrows and confounds all human wisdom (cf. 1 Cor. 1:18–2:5).

In the second and third stanzas (Isa. 53:1–3, 4–6) the speakers are witnesses. God has repeatedly called on his people to bear witness to him (Isa. 43:10, 12; 44:8), but they have been blind and deaf. Now, not only do they attest that the Lord alone is God (Isa. 43:12), but they bear witness to what God has done through his suffering, vindicated, exalted Servant. At first, reactions to him are cautious, and then negative (Isa. 53:1–3). He grew to be despised and rejected by men: “we esteemed him not,” the witnesses say. Indeed, when he was barbarically killed, many thought it God’s providential judgment (Isa. 53:4)—and they spoke better than they knew. But the witnesses come to grasp that “he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities”—a substitutionary lamb (Isa. 53:5–7). In the fourth stanza (Isa. 53:7–9) Isaiah reflects on the Servant’s silent suffering and ambivalent death and burial (Had God accepted his work?), to end in the fifth (Isa. 53:10–12) with resounding affirmation of the purposes of God. God’s Servant will act wisely (Isa. 52:13); “by his knowledge” he will (literally) cause many to become righteous, “and he will bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11). Reflect on Matthew 1:21. Hallelujah! What a Savior!

via Deuteronomy 26; Psalms 117–118; Isaiah 53; Matthew 1 – For the Love of God.

Apr
2012

Week 5: Isaiah 53:10-12

[10] Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;

he has put him to grief;

when his soul makes an offering for guilt,

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

[11] Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

[12] Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,

and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,

because he poured out his soul to death

and was numbered with the transgressors;

yet he bore the sin of many,

and makes intercession for the transgressors.