A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of birth. [2] It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. [3] Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. [4] The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. [5] It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. [6] For as the crackling of [n]thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fools; this also is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 7:1-6 ESV)
CPIF
Monday, March 26, 2012
Jesus and the Gospel
Craig Blomberg, my former New Testament Professor has done again in this updated 2nd edition of Jesue and the Gospels, he incorporates new scholarly materials, critical methods of seening and reading the four gospels in a new light. The book prepares theological students for an intensive analysis of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Dr. Blomberg makes reading the gospels as easy as eating ICE Cream, yet Theologically, Historically and Culturally Realiable in context and contents.CPIF
Thursday, March 22, 2012
What is Reformed Theology???
You’ve heard of Reformed theology, but you’re not certain what it is. Some references to it have been positive, some negative. It appears to be important, and you’d like to know more about it. And you want a full explanation, not a simplistic one. Few evangelical Christians today understand Reformed theology. They know it has something to do with predestination, and they may have heard of “the five points.” But they can’t name these points, and they think no one believes most of them anymore. Dr. Sproul says there’s more to Reformed theology than these five points. Reformed theology reveals just how awesome the grace of God is. The roots of evangelical Christianity are found in the soil of the sixteenth century Protestant Reformation, which brought a return of true biblical theology to the world. In this series, Dr. Sproul offers an introduction to Reformed theology, the heart of historical evangelicalism. C.H. Spurgeon once said that Reformed theology is nothing other than biblical Christianity. http://www.ligonier.org/search/?q=what+is+reformed+theology&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=what%20is%20reformed%20theology&utm_content=%21acq%21v2%21s-p-7427159784-1135367664&utm_campaign=Product+-+US+Only+-+Biz&gclid=CIGZ58CE-64CFcNdTAodFTLtwg
Why we Fight!
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions areat war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. (James 4:1-10 ESV)
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
The Bible is God's anthropology rather than man's theology.— Abraham Joshua Heschel
We humans often puzzle over our own humanity, scanning our heights and our depths, wondering about and worrying over the meaning of our good and our evil. No other animal reflects on its species like this. Here, and in so many other ways, we stand unique among living creatures. Why does a young student go on a homicidal rampage at Virginia Tech, murdering dozens of innocent people and then killing himself? Why does such evil strike so hard and so erratically?In spite of these upsurges of human evil, we are also struck by the beauty, courage and genius wrought by human minds, hearts and hands. After every tragedy (on September 11, 2001 or at Virginia Tech), heroes emerge who rescue the living, comfort the dying, and put others above themselves in spontaneous acts of altruism.Singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn ponders the complexities and contradictions of humanity in "The Burden of the Angel/Beast" — the distinctively human discomfort with being human and not understanding the origin and meaning of our own humanness:What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, the glory and refuse of the universe! Yet this was no mere marveling. Any worldview worth its rational salt needs to offer a sufficient explanation for both human greatness and debauchery. Pascal goes on: "Man's greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness." Pascal believed the answers were found in the Bible. We find greatness in humanity because we are made in the divine image (Genesis 1:27).
However, that image has been defaced (but not erased) through the fall (Genesis 3; Romans 3). There is something wrong with every aspect of our being, but we remain noble in our origin. There are, to invoke Cockburn again, "rumors of glory" found in humanity.From the greatness and wretchedness of humanity, Pascal developed an argument for the truth and rationality of Christianity. While his ingenious argument has been reconstructed in more detail elsewhere, [4] we will consider its basic structure, which provides a fruitful point of discussion with seeking and questioning people today.
Two ExtremesThe genius of the Christian perspective is that it explains both greatness and misery without exalting one above the other. Our nobility, expressed in the achievements of thought, for example, is due to our divine image. Because of this, we transcend the rest of creation. Yet we abuse our greatest endowments, wasting our God-given skills on trivia and diversions, because we know we will die and do not know what to do about it. We are the corruption of a former original. Pascal says: The point is that if man had never been corrupted, he would, in his innocence, confidently enjoy both truth and felicity, and, if man had never been anything but corrupt, he would have no idea either of truth or bliss. But unhappy as we are (and we should be less so if there were no element of greatness in our condition) we have an idea of happiness but we cannot attain it. We perceive an image of the truth and possess nothing but falsehood.
In other words, we are royal ruins: We possess some truth, but we cannot rest content in what we naturally know; we feel our own corruption, and in so doing, we realize the human condition is somehow abnormal, flawed and degenerate. In the context of surveying human greatness and misery in many dimensions of life, Pascal says: "It is the wretchedness of a great lord, the wretchedness of a dispossessed king."
In surveying human philosophies and non-Christian religions, Pascal notes that they either exalt humans at the expense of taking seriously their weaknesses or reduce humans to nothing at the expense of their significance. In Pascal's day, many were impressed by the philosophy of the Stoics, who asserted that humans were great in reason and courage and partook of the divine essence of the universe. Yet these Stoics made little allowance for human weakness, cruelty, uncertainty and fragility. Thus, they exalted greatness at the expense of misery.On the other hand, various skeptics, such as Michel Montaigne (1533-1592), delighted in showing the weakness of human reason and the arrogance of our pretensions. Yet the skeptics downplayed our ability to reason properly and the significance of human achievements in science, art and elsewhere. As Pascal said, they should have been more skeptical of their skepticism.
The New Spirituality, India's Caste SystemWhile the specific writers that Pascal addressed are not commonly discussed today, the tendency either to overrate or underrate humanity is still with us.
Many examples abound, but I will briefly inspect one worldview that overrates humanity: the New Spirituality. The New Spirituality is an amalgamation of ideas drawn from many sources. But whether it is the best-selling book, The Secret (hawked by Oprah Winfrey), or the movie, What the Bleep Do We (K)now!?, the New Spirituality claims we are divine beings who can tap into unlimited potential through a change in consciousness. (In this way, it is similar to Stoicism.) We are limited not by our sinful condition, but only by negative thought patterns. The "secret" of The Secret is "the law of attraction" — we attract good things to ourselves through positive thoughts and negative things to ourselves through negative thoughts.This blind optimism and inflation of human abilities appeals to our pride and the American "can-do" attitude, but it is radically out of alignment with reality. Yes, humans achieve much of what they conceive, but there are limits. Thought does not create reality ex nihilo. Moreover, humans inflict evil on others willfully and repeatedly. We cannot explain this away on the basis of the negative thoughts of those who are victimized.Consider the untouchables (or Dalits) of India. Their 3,000 years of subjugation by the upper Hindu castes cannot be explained on the basis of low self-esteem among the Dalits. That would be to blame the victim unjustly.
Rather, human beings, given their fallen propensity to exalt themselves over others artificially, have unjustly oppressed fellow imagebearers of God for three millennia. "Man's inhumanity to man" is a fact of human history, in India and everywhere else under the sun. Even a "royal ruin" should be able to see that and search for an answer.Finding a Balance: The Christian PerspectiveBut the Christian worldview conserves both our greatness and our wretchedness in a profound revelation, something not available to unaided human reason, as Pascal points out:Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you. Listen to God.
The biblical account of our creation and fall best fits the facts of human reality. However, we must "listen to God" — that is, attend to what God has spoken in the Bible — to discover this liberating truth.Pascal further counsels us that the biblical account reveals that there is a Redeemer for royal ruins — Himself, a King, who became a man in order to rescue those who are "east of Eden" and standing at the brink of eternity. Pascal says that in Him we find hope for our deposed condition: "Jesus is a God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair." Though we are royal ruins, we can find total forgiveness, redemption and eternal life through the one who truly understands our condition. (See John 3:16-18; 10:10; and Romans 5:1-8.)
Copyright © 2007 Douglas Groothuis. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.More articles by Dr. GroothuisNotes[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy ofJudaism (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Girox, 1976), p. 412. Blaise Pascal, Pensées. Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer. (New York: PenguinBooks, 1995), p. 34. Pascal, p. 46. See Douglas Groothuis, On Pascal (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2003), Chapter 8. For a more indepth treatment, see Douglas Groothuis, "Deposed Royalty: Pascal's Anthropological Argument," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 41/2 (June 1998), pp. 297-313. Pascal, p. 35. Pascal, p. 29. For more on Pascal's canvassing of the human condition, see Groothuis, On Pascal, Chapter 8. See Groothuis, On Pascal, pp. 65-66. See my article, "The New Age Worldview: Is It Believable?" Pascal, p. 35. Pascal, p. 69; see also Groothuis, On Pascal, pp. 90-93. Pascal's argument summarized in this essay is brilliant and essentially biblical. But for a more balanced and biblical understanding of Christianity as a whole, see John Stott's classic, Basic Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007).
We humans often puzzle over our own humanity, scanning our heights and our depths, wondering about and worrying over the meaning of our good and our evil. No other animal reflects on its species like this. Here, and in so many other ways, we stand unique among living creatures. Why does a young student go on a homicidal rampage at Virginia Tech, murdering dozens of innocent people and then killing himself? Why does such evil strike so hard and so erratically?In spite of these upsurges of human evil, we are also struck by the beauty, courage and genius wrought by human minds, hearts and hands. After every tragedy (on September 11, 2001 or at Virginia Tech), heroes emerge who rescue the living, comfort the dying, and put others above themselves in spontaneous acts of altruism.Singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn ponders the complexities and contradictions of humanity in "The Burden of the Angel/Beast" — the distinctively human discomfort with being human and not understanding the origin and meaning of our own humanness:What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, the glory and refuse of the universe! Yet this was no mere marveling. Any worldview worth its rational salt needs to offer a sufficient explanation for both human greatness and debauchery. Pascal goes on: "Man's greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in man some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness." Pascal believed the answers were found in the Bible. We find greatness in humanity because we are made in the divine image (Genesis 1:27).
However, that image has been defaced (but not erased) through the fall (Genesis 3; Romans 3). There is something wrong with every aspect of our being, but we remain noble in our origin. There are, to invoke Cockburn again, "rumors of glory" found in humanity.From the greatness and wretchedness of humanity, Pascal developed an argument for the truth and rationality of Christianity. While his ingenious argument has been reconstructed in more detail elsewhere, [4] we will consider its basic structure, which provides a fruitful point of discussion with seeking and questioning people today.
Two ExtremesThe genius of the Christian perspective is that it explains both greatness and misery without exalting one above the other. Our nobility, expressed in the achievements of thought, for example, is due to our divine image. Because of this, we transcend the rest of creation. Yet we abuse our greatest endowments, wasting our God-given skills on trivia and diversions, because we know we will die and do not know what to do about it. We are the corruption of a former original. Pascal says: The point is that if man had never been corrupted, he would, in his innocence, confidently enjoy both truth and felicity, and, if man had never been anything but corrupt, he would have no idea either of truth or bliss. But unhappy as we are (and we should be less so if there were no element of greatness in our condition) we have an idea of happiness but we cannot attain it. We perceive an image of the truth and possess nothing but falsehood.
In other words, we are royal ruins: We possess some truth, but we cannot rest content in what we naturally know; we feel our own corruption, and in so doing, we realize the human condition is somehow abnormal, flawed and degenerate. In the context of surveying human greatness and misery in many dimensions of life, Pascal says: "It is the wretchedness of a great lord, the wretchedness of a dispossessed king."
In surveying human philosophies and non-Christian religions, Pascal notes that they either exalt humans at the expense of taking seriously their weaknesses or reduce humans to nothing at the expense of their significance. In Pascal's day, many were impressed by the philosophy of the Stoics, who asserted that humans were great in reason and courage and partook of the divine essence of the universe. Yet these Stoics made little allowance for human weakness, cruelty, uncertainty and fragility. Thus, they exalted greatness at the expense of misery.On the other hand, various skeptics, such as Michel Montaigne (1533-1592), delighted in showing the weakness of human reason and the arrogance of our pretensions. Yet the skeptics downplayed our ability to reason properly and the significance of human achievements in science, art and elsewhere. As Pascal said, they should have been more skeptical of their skepticism.
The New Spirituality, India's Caste SystemWhile the specific writers that Pascal addressed are not commonly discussed today, the tendency either to overrate or underrate humanity is still with us.
Many examples abound, but I will briefly inspect one worldview that overrates humanity: the New Spirituality. The New Spirituality is an amalgamation of ideas drawn from many sources. But whether it is the best-selling book, The Secret (hawked by Oprah Winfrey), or the movie, What the Bleep Do We (K)now!?, the New Spirituality claims we are divine beings who can tap into unlimited potential through a change in consciousness. (In this way, it is similar to Stoicism.) We are limited not by our sinful condition, but only by negative thought patterns. The "secret" of The Secret is "the law of attraction" — we attract good things to ourselves through positive thoughts and negative things to ourselves through negative thoughts.This blind optimism and inflation of human abilities appeals to our pride and the American "can-do" attitude, but it is radically out of alignment with reality. Yes, humans achieve much of what they conceive, but there are limits. Thought does not create reality ex nihilo. Moreover, humans inflict evil on others willfully and repeatedly. We cannot explain this away on the basis of the negative thoughts of those who are victimized.Consider the untouchables (or Dalits) of India. Their 3,000 years of subjugation by the upper Hindu castes cannot be explained on the basis of low self-esteem among the Dalits. That would be to blame the victim unjustly.
Rather, human beings, given their fallen propensity to exalt themselves over others artificially, have unjustly oppressed fellow imagebearers of God for three millennia. "Man's inhumanity to man" is a fact of human history, in India and everywhere else under the sun. Even a "royal ruin" should be able to see that and search for an answer.Finding a Balance: The Christian PerspectiveBut the Christian worldview conserves both our greatness and our wretchedness in a profound revelation, something not available to unaided human reason, as Pascal points out:Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you. Listen to God.
The biblical account of our creation and fall best fits the facts of human reality. However, we must "listen to God" — that is, attend to what God has spoken in the Bible — to discover this liberating truth.Pascal further counsels us that the biblical account reveals that there is a Redeemer for royal ruins — Himself, a King, who became a man in order to rescue those who are "east of Eden" and standing at the brink of eternity. Pascal says that in Him we find hope for our deposed condition: "Jesus is a God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair." Though we are royal ruins, we can find total forgiveness, redemption and eternal life through the one who truly understands our condition. (See John 3:16-18; 10:10; and Romans 5:1-8.)
Copyright © 2007 Douglas Groothuis. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.More articles by Dr. GroothuisNotes[1] Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy ofJudaism (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Girox, 1976), p. 412. Blaise Pascal, Pensées. Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer. (New York: PenguinBooks, 1995), p. 34. Pascal, p. 46. See Douglas Groothuis, On Pascal (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2003), Chapter 8. For a more indepth treatment, see Douglas Groothuis, "Deposed Royalty: Pascal's Anthropological Argument," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 41/2 (June 1998), pp. 297-313. Pascal, p. 35. Pascal, p. 29. For more on Pascal's canvassing of the human condition, see Groothuis, On Pascal, Chapter 8. See Groothuis, On Pascal, pp. 65-66. See my article, "The New Age Worldview: Is It Believable?" Pascal, p. 35. Pascal, p. 69; see also Groothuis, On Pascal, pp. 90-93. Pascal's argument summarized in this essay is brilliant and essentially biblical. But for a more balanced and biblical understanding of Christianity as a whole, see John Stott's classic, Basic Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007).
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
May I ask you about your own devotional life?
May I ask you about your own devotional life? How are you
doing spiritually speaking right now? Are you growing in the knowledge and the
grace of God?
Sir Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen farther, it
is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Pastor Steve Weaver commented on this by saying, "Newton saw
farther than anyone had before, because he learned from those who had gone
before him. Just imagine, if all anyone knew was the knowledge he accumulated
on his own! There would be no electricity, no light bulb, no telephone, no
computers, no cars, no airplanes, no space shuttles, etc. But because men
learned from those who had gone before, these inventions and many more were
possible. Sadly, many preachers like to work in a vacuum, gleaning nothing from
the God-gifted men who have gone before them. God has especially equipped the
Body of Christ with teachers, evangelist, and pastors. I thank God for men like
Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Newton, John Bunyan, Jonathan
Edwards, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and a host of others, who are, without a
doubt, God's gifts to the Church! By studying the writings of these gifted men,
we are enabled to “stand on their shoulders."
That's true regarding knowledge in general and the
knowledge of God in particular, but I believe this principle also holds true
concerning developing a rich devotional life. Don't simply try to go it alone.
Let others help you on your journey.
2 Timothy reveals Paul's mindset as he awaited his
impending death. Understanding this context, let’s read this last instruction
to Timothy: “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas,
also the books, and above all the parchments." (2 Tim. 4:13)
I find this quite amazing. Paul, the great Apostle was
about to die. In the very same chapter he had written,"I am already being
poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have
fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
(v. 6, 7)
Paul was the great adventurer and pioneer. He had taken
the Gospel of Christ to many foreign lands for the very first time. He had
accomplished so much in the cause of Christ. If anyone had the right to think
that they could coast the rest of the way it was Paul. He'd been there, done that,
bought the T-shirt and was usually beaten, stoned and jailed for doing so. Even
now he writes from a jail cell in the city of Rome. But rather than wanting to
sit back, relax and take it easy spiritually, his heart was to press on... to
study more, to learn something more about the Word of God, and know the Master
He served that little bit better. Because of this strong, abiding passion in
Paul, he asks Timothy to bring the parchments with him when he came (in all
probability, the "parchments" mentioned here is a reference to the
sacred Scriptures themselves). But in addition to the parchments, there's
something else Paul wants. He wants books. Books!!?? Books!!??
Can we grasp what's happening here? The Apostle Paul is
just about to die... about to depart to be with Christ... and he asks for
books??? I can certainly understand Paul’s' desire to read the scriptures and
find comfort and solace there, but "books"? Knowing that death was
soon awaiting, would we have requested books?
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, commentating on this verse says,
"He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has seen the Lord, and yet he
wants books! He has had wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books!
He had been caught up in the third heaven, and had heard things unlawful for a
man to utter, yet he wants books! He has written a major part of the New
Testament, and yet he wants books! The apostle says to Timothy and so he says
to every Christian, “Give thyself to reading.” The man who never reads will
never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use
the thoughts of other men’s brains proves he has no brains of his own."
(from sermon #542, "Paul - His Cloak and His Books")
If anyone could have said "I don't need the writings
of others" it was Paul. I dare to say that no man living had the insight
he did. Yet, he wanted to know what others were discovering in their walk with
Christ. What a lesson this is.
Christian, let this be a word of challenge and of
strength to you - don't try to go it alone in your walk with Christ. Allow
others to help and to guide you. Take some friends with you as you enter the
secret place - the place where you and God meet each day... above all take the
Bible, of course... but also take with you the writings of a few trusted
individuals who have walked the same barren hills as yourself, and have beaten
a sure and tried path to the Savior. As you do, I think you'll find that others
have been where you now stand... and what they found, you can find too. Allow
them to direct you to the arms and safety of the Shepherd of the sheep - our
great God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
By Pastor John Samson from the “Reformation Theology”
Website
doing spiritually speaking right now? Are you growing in the knowledge and the
grace of God?
Sir Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen farther, it
is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Pastor Steve Weaver commented on this by saying, "Newton saw
farther than anyone had before, because he learned from those who had gone
before him. Just imagine, if all anyone knew was the knowledge he accumulated
on his own! There would be no electricity, no light bulb, no telephone, no
computers, no cars, no airplanes, no space shuttles, etc. But because men
learned from those who had gone before, these inventions and many more were
possible. Sadly, many preachers like to work in a vacuum, gleaning nothing from
the God-gifted men who have gone before them. God has especially equipped the
Body of Christ with teachers, evangelist, and pastors. I thank God for men like
Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Newton, John Bunyan, Jonathan
Edwards, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and a host of others, who are, without a
doubt, God's gifts to the Church! By studying the writings of these gifted men,
we are enabled to “stand on their shoulders."
That's true regarding knowledge in general and the
knowledge of God in particular, but I believe this principle also holds true
concerning developing a rich devotional life. Don't simply try to go it alone.
Let others help you on your journey.
2 Timothy reveals Paul's mindset as he awaited his
impending death. Understanding this context, let’s read this last instruction
to Timothy: “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas,
also the books, and above all the parchments." (2 Tim. 4:13)
I find this quite amazing. Paul, the great Apostle was
about to die. In the very same chapter he had written,"I am already being
poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have
fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."
(v. 6, 7)
Paul was the great adventurer and pioneer. He had taken
the Gospel of Christ to many foreign lands for the very first time. He had
accomplished so much in the cause of Christ. If anyone had the right to think
that they could coast the rest of the way it was Paul. He'd been there, done that,
bought the T-shirt and was usually beaten, stoned and jailed for doing so. Even
now he writes from a jail cell in the city of Rome. But rather than wanting to
sit back, relax and take it easy spiritually, his heart was to press on... to
study more, to learn something more about the Word of God, and know the Master
He served that little bit better. Because of this strong, abiding passion in
Paul, he asks Timothy to bring the parchments with him when he came (in all
probability, the "parchments" mentioned here is a reference to the
sacred Scriptures themselves). But in addition to the parchments, there's
something else Paul wants. He wants books. Books!!?? Books!!??
Can we grasp what's happening here? The Apostle Paul is
just about to die... about to depart to be with Christ... and he asks for
books??? I can certainly understand Paul’s' desire to read the scriptures and
find comfort and solace there, but "books"? Knowing that death was
soon awaiting, would we have requested books?
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, commentating on this verse says,
"He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has seen the Lord, and yet he
wants books! He has had wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books!
He had been caught up in the third heaven, and had heard things unlawful for a
man to utter, yet he wants books! He has written a major part of the New
Testament, and yet he wants books! The apostle says to Timothy and so he says
to every Christian, “Give thyself to reading.” The man who never reads will
never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use
the thoughts of other men’s brains proves he has no brains of his own."
(from sermon #542, "Paul - His Cloak and His Books")
If anyone could have said "I don't need the writings
of others" it was Paul. I dare to say that no man living had the insight
he did. Yet, he wanted to know what others were discovering in their walk with
Christ. What a lesson this is.
Christian, let this be a word of challenge and of
strength to you - don't try to go it alone in your walk with Christ. Allow
others to help and to guide you. Take some friends with you as you enter the
secret place - the place where you and God meet each day... above all take the
Bible, of course... but also take with you the writings of a few trusted
individuals who have walked the same barren hills as yourself, and have beaten
a sure and tried path to the Savior. As you do, I think you'll find that others
have been where you now stand... and what they found, you can find too. Allow
them to direct you to the arms and safety of the Shepherd of the sheep - our
great God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
By Pastor John Samson from the “Reformation Theology”
Website
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