Men's Rally Report

Thanks, Derek, for a great post on Nehemiah. I look forward to the next installments. Our friends over at the Mississippi Founders' Fraternal have posted a very kind report on this year's Mid-South Men's Rally. Read it here.
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Nehemiah: Man of Prayer (1)

In any assessment of what makes the lives of some Christians healthy and heroic, and others halting and hollow, prayer--its presence or absence, vitality or sickness—is crucial. Prayer is the most practical test there is in assessing growth in grace. It is like a thermometer that measures spiritual temperature.

Talk about prayer makes us think of its great practitioners in the Bible: in the New Testament we would have to single out the apostle Paul, whose frequent exhortations to pray issue from a life that was in close communion with God. But it is to the Old Testament that we must go to find the richest examples of all. The Old Testament seems to have more time to explore Bible characters and relate both their blemishes and brilliance.

Several come to mind: folk like Abraham pleading for Sodom (Gen. 18:16-33); Jacob in his midnight struggle (Gen. 32:22-32); Moses expostulating with God over a stubborn, rebellious people (Exod. 32:1-34:9); David, up there with the best of them and towering over most—no one can pray aright who does not know and love the psalms; then there is Daniel—the ninth chapter of Daniel is perhaps the greatest written prayer in the Bible.

Others also come to mind: Gideon longing for guidance (Judges 6); Hannah in her tearful, tormented state longing for a child in old age (1 Sam 1); Solomon in the newly completed temple longing for God's presence (1 Kings 8:22-9:9); Elijah daring to ask fire from heaven to consume a drenched sacrificial altar (1 Kings 18); King Hezekiah spreading out before God a bullying letter from an Assyrian tyrant and saying in effect "Now, Lord, read this!" (2 Kings 19,20); Isaiah, again and again, pleading for God to 'come down' and initiate a sovereign work of revival in beleaguered, backslidden Judah (Isa. 63:7-64:12).

Then there are two giants of prayer, Ezra and Nehemiah, who emerge historically at the end of the Old Testament story, though our Bibles place their respective books half way through. It wasn't until the fifteenth century that these two books were separated; they follow where 2 Chronicles leaves off—a book in which Ezra may also have had a hand.

Over the next several posts we will take a close look at Nehemiah to see what he has to teach us about prayer.
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Hoc est corpus meum

This Lord’s Day, we come to the passage in Mark’s Gospel which recounts the institution of the Lord’s Supper (Mark 14:22-25). Christians have disagreed as to the meaning of the ritual of bread and wine. At the time of the Reformation, questions about the nature of Christ’s presence in the Supper (in what sense is Christ present?) was the center of many a stormy debate. At the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, the Roman Catholic church affirmed (as it still affirms) a doctrine called “transubstantiation.”

Transubstantiation suggests that the “substance” (slippery word then and slippery word now) of the bread and wine are miraculously transformed into the “substance” of Christ’s body and blood. They may look like bread and wine, even taste like bread and wine but these are “accidents”—tricks of the mind we might naughtily say. The bread and wine are the body and blood of Jesus (though few Catholics think this through). Luther (and Eastern Orthodox and many Anglicans have largely followed him) modified this but not in any helpful (or understandable) way. Confusing a basic rule of Christology, he applied a property of Christ’s divine nature (ubiquity—the property of being everywhere present) to his human nature, suggesting that Christ’s body and blood come to be present in, with, and under the form of the bread and wine. It is called “consubstantiation” (a term that Luther did not favor). Zwingli denied that the glorified Christ, now in heaven, is present in any way. John Calvin held that though the bread and wine remained unchanged (he agreed with Zwingli that the is of “this is my body... my blood” means “represents”), Christ is present by the Spirit and that in the Supper we are drawn to fellowship with Christ who remains in heaven. “Lift up your hearts” (the so-called sursum corda), an ancient liturgical rubric, was thus employed by Calvin in the Genevan and Strasbourg Lord’s Supper liturgies of 1543 and 1545.
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An Update on Mary Mohler's Dad

Last night, at around 7, Mary Mohler's Dad went home to be with the Lord. I talked with Al about three hours later, and sent him our love and condolences - assuring him of the prayers of God's people here at First Presbyterian: for Mary and her Mom, that they might know the peace that passes understanding, even in their great loss; for Al, as he preaches the funeral, that in spite of the emotional challenge of bringing the message at his father-in-law's memorial service (with whom he had a deep bond of affection), he would be able to proclaim the Gospel clearly and powerfully.

While we will greatly miss Al being with us this weekend, we are so thankful in God's mercy that he has been able to be with his wife and mother-in-law through the whole of this dark providence. The funeral service will be on Monday in Louisville, KY.

By the way, he wanted to assure me of his desire to come again soon, and I told him we would take him up on that! Meanwhile, we are looking forward to having Randy Stinson with us tonight.
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Randy Stinson Family Pic

Randy, Danna, Gunnar and Georgia (twin eight year-olds), Fisher (seven years), Eden (six years) and Payton (four years).
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Men's Rally Last Minute Change

Our hearts go out to Al and Mary Mohler. Mary's dad is at the edge of death, and she and Al are holding vigil over him as I write. Hence, Al will not be able to be with us this weekend for the Men's Rally.

The good news is that my dear friend, Dr. Randy Stinson, is stepping in for Al at the last minute. Randy Stinson is the executive director for The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW), an evangelical organization that seeks to promote the biblical teachings on the complementary differences between men and women, created equal in the image of God. He has served as a senior pastor and in various other church staff positions.

Randy received a B.A. from The University of South Florida, in Tampa, Florida, an M.Div. from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, a Th.M. and a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

He has served as executive director of CBMW since 2000. Since then he has spoken at conferences alongside such evangelical leaders as Paige Patterson, R. Kent Hughes, and Wayne Grudem and has addressed faculty and students at a number of evangelical colleges and seminaries. Randy has appeared on Fox News, Nickelodeon's Nick News program, Religion and Ethics Weekly (PBS), and he has also been featured on over 75 radio shows, including Janet Parshall's America and The Albert Mohler Program.

He also serves as Assistant Professor of Family and Gender Studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Randy has been married to his wife Danna for fourteen years, and they are the parents of five children: Gunnar and Georgia (twin eight year-olds), Fisher (seven years), Eden (six years) and Payton (four years).
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When cool is not so cool

It's cold in Philadelphia. I'm here to talk about my latest child, Reformation21. A chilly breeze is blowing in from the North-east that cuts right through to the bone.

It reminds me of "home" (Wales, that is, not Mississippi). I have been thinking of those days when I walked to the village to catch the bus to school, hands blue with the biting Siberian wind that threatened snow and ice. Strange to say, I like the cold. I still can't get used to the feeling of always being "wet" with the Mississippian humidity causing me to break out in a sweat. It's simply not cricket.

But cool isn't always a good thing. Take the latest book that Christians are talking about, Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. It is another volume that purportedly helps us Neanderthals understand and communicate with "our generation"--the postmodern world which doesn't seem to know what truth means, that is offended by doctrine and communicates better by a series grunts and coded phrases interspersed with brand labels.

But Miller's thesis presents a Jesus that is so "cool" that the Bible authors would scarcely recognize him; more of a camp fire "listener" who likes shmores than a hell-fire, Scripture quoting no-nonsense preacher who insists that he must endure the wrath of God as a substitute so that sinners can be saved.

But don't take my word for it, read a trenchant review here.
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Judas Iscariot... Notes that didn't make it into the sermon

In addition to some of things I said last night in the sermon on Judas, I thought the following quotations would help us understand this portion of Scripture and the role Judas plays in the redemptive purposes of God:

John Calvin

“There is no wickedness, indeed, that is perpetrated by men, to which Satan does not excite them, but the more hideous and execrable any crime is, the more ought we to view in it the rage of the devil, who drives about, in all possible directions, men who have been forsaken by God. But though the lust of men is kindled into a fiercer flame by Satan’s fan, still it does not cease to be a furnace; it contains the flame kindled within itself, it receives with avidity the agitation of the fan, so that no excuse is left for wicked men.”

John Calvin Calvin’s Commentaries, Volume 7: The Gospels (Grand Rapids: Associated Publishers and Authors Inc., n.d.), p. 821.

John MacArthur

"Judas is a prime example of a professing believer who fell into absolute apostasy. For three years he followed the Lord with the other disciples. He appeared to be one of them. Presumably he thought of himself as a believer, at least at the outset. It is doubtful that he joined Christ's band with the intention of turning against him. Somewhere along the line he became greedy, but that could hardly have been his motive in the beginning; Jesus and the disciples never had anything of material value (Matthew 8:20). Apparently Judas initially shared the hope of Christ's kingdom, and he likely believed that Jesus was the Messiah. After all, he also had left everything to follow the Lord. In modern terminology, he had 'accepted' Jesus ...."

"Yet, while the others were growing into apostles, Judas was quietly becoming a vile, calculating tool of Satan. Whatever his character seemed to be at the beginning, his faith was not real (John 13:10-11). He was unregenerated, and his heart gradually hardened so that he became the treacherous man who sold the Savior for a fistful of coins. In the end, he was so prepared to do Satan's bidding that the devil himself possessed Judas (John 13:27)"

John MacArthur The Gospel According To Jesus (1989), p.99

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Dr. Peter Jones at First Pres.

Paganism and Gnosticism are alive and well in America.

Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale and energetic proselytizer for neo-Gnosticism, is correct when describes what he calls the “American Religion” as “solitude, individuality and pragmatism of feelings, acts, and experiences rather than thoughts, desires, and memories.” Bloom points his disciples to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, in his infamous “Divinity School Address” prophetically declared,

“That is always best which gives me to myself. . . . The Puritans in England and America . . . their creed is passing away, and none arises in its room. I think no man can go with his thoughts about him, into one of our churches, without feeling, that what hold the public worship had on men is gone, or going. It has lost its grasp on the affection of the good, and the fear of the bad. In the country, neighborhoods, half parishes are signing off. . . . It is already beginning to indicate character and religion to withdraw from the religious meetings. . . . Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone. . . . Dare to love God without mediator or veil.”

“Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, 'I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks.' . . . But what a distortion [of] his doctrine and memory . . . [in] the following ages!”

Don’t miss Dr. Peter Jones’ seminar on “Neo-Paganism.” Dr. Jones is one of the world’s foremost authorities on neo-paganism. He will specifically address “The Presence and Nature of Paganism in Christian America” and “Christian Evangelism in Pagan America.” For more information on Dr. Jones, see his website at http://www.spirit-wars.com/index.html.

Place: Patterson Hall, First Presbyterian Church
Date: Saturday, February 11, 2006
Time: 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

There is no cost for the seminar and no registration is required. If you have questions call Jeremy Smith at 601-973-9121.
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Miles Coverdale and the English Bible

Miles Coverdale died on this day in 1569 being the first to publish a complete Bible in the English language (on October 4, 1535). He had assisted William Tyndale (as had John Rogers) in the last six years of his life before Tyndale's execution. Coverdale was to complete the process of translating the Old Testament into English overseas. The Coverdale Bible was deeply significant in the formation of the King James Bible (1611). It was the Coverdale Bible that gave us the following phrases:

'the pride of life'

'the world passeth away'

'lovingkindness'

'tender mercy'

And two of my favourite verses:

'so yt thou shat not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night' (Psalm 91:5)

'there is no more Triacle at Gilead' (Jeremiah 8:22).

The preface to the Coverdale Bible contains some wonderful instruction on how to read the Bible, especially when one comes across a passage that we do not understand:

'Now will I exhort thee, whosoever thou art that readest scripture, if thou find ought therein that thou understandest not, or that appeareth to be repugnant, give no temerarious nor hasty judgment thereof; but ascribe it to thine own ignorance, not to the scriptures. Think that thou understandest it not, or that it hath some other meaning, or that it is haply overseen of the interpreters, or wrong printed. Again it shall greatly help thee to understand scripture, if thou mark, not only what is spoken or written, but of whom, and unto whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstances, considering what goeth before and what followeth after.'

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