Lost Pages

I have had Don Carson's The God Who Is There for a long time. At one point I lent it to a friend without reading it first and forgot all about it. Recently, I wanted to read something on biblical theology, so I decided to give it a go. I am so glad that I did! This is the first I have read a book by Don Carson, and it won't be the last! If this is anything to go by, Carson is an excellent author.  Like all brilliant communicators his goal is not impress you with his vast knowledge, but to point you as clearly as possible to the goal he has in mind. For Carson, the goal is to showcase the beauty of God  revealed to us in the plotline of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.  There are so many gems in this book. The first chapter on Genesis and the last chapter on Revelation shone brightly! The best chapter is probably s Chapter 10 which takes us through the passion native of Matthew and highlights the ironies of the crucifiction. The book is full of wonderful stories, poe...

1. The Holy Spirit helps me speak when I am in precarious situations and need to bear witness : When they bring you to trial and deliver you over, do not be anxious beforehand what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. (‭Mark‬ ‭13‬:‭11‬)

What woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? - JESUS That statement is from Luke 15:8. Actually, my answer to the Lord's rhetorical question has always been no. I do not know such a woman. Not one who does all three things as stated. I can see why the woman lights the lamp (it is dark) and seeks diligently until she finds it (it is worth something). But I can't see why she decides to sweep the house in the middle of searching for a coin! And clearly late in the day or more likely at night! As someone who grew up in a village, I struggle to even imagine these three actions taking place at once! The reason is obvious. Sweeping takes time and distracts from the purpose of searching. But not only that if it is not done properly, depending on what we are looking for, it even leads to mistakenly throwing away other things!

Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul . (Acts 13:1 ESV) God the Holy Spirit loves diversity and where He is at work diversity is always present in one form or another. Here in this single verse we see many forms of diversity in cosmopolitan  church of Antioch : (a) diversity of race (b) diversity of geographical background (c) diversity of social class (d) diversity of religious background (e) diversity of sinners (f) diversity of spiritual gifts Barnabas was a 'Levite from Cyprus’. Therefore Jewish like Saul of Tarsus. On the other hand Lucius of Cyrene, was most likely an Arab from from North Africa. Cyrene was a Roman province in Libya. That takes care of (a), (b) and (d).

This poster should be on all our bedroom and office walls. In our society lawyers are usually seen as a necessary evil. My image of lawyers is still shaped by my university years when I watched the movie the Devil's Advocate. There the lawyers are presented as part of the Devil's scheme to conquer the world. As I have grown in knowing God, I have come to have a deeper appreciation of the image of lawyers. Lawyers now remind me of the powerful image of God presented in the Bible. In the Bible God’s image is that of a prosecuting attorney . He is the Lord who brings his case against nations. In one of the shortest books of the Bible, God indicts Israel’s neighbouring state Edom through one of his appointed prophets, Obadiah. God lays out specific charges. Edom will be judged because it is full of pride; trusts in false gods of material wealth and human ability; and, has committed unspeakable violence against its brother nation Israel.

Does God have a name? Is God the name for God? Is God bothered what I call him? Does God care about it at all? And if he does, why does God care? Am I obligated to care for God’s name? How do I know when I am not caring for God’s name? What happens if I don’t care for God’s name? These are important questions! Questions that boil down to a single one: Does God’s name really matter?  The third commandment provides the clearest instruction in the Bible concerning God’s name. Among the Ten Commandments that Moses delivered to the children of Israel at Mount Sinai contained this injunction: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain” [Exodus 20:7] There are three observations we can make about God’s name from this verse. First, God has a name . Exodus 20 begins with God making himself known to His chosen people Israel. He declares, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out o...

We live in an age of increasing danger, threats and opposition to those who worship the name of Jesus Christ. Those who are not willing to compromise with the secular demands of our age. All around the world, Christians are suffering increasing persecution .  Persecutions and other struggles of the Christian life have the capacity to reduce our trust and confidence in God. In our weakest moments we can find ourselves asking “who is truly in charge”? It is in such times that we must turn our attention to God. We must constantly be reminded of God's amazing character. When we face difficulties and focus on God, we begin to see the challenges of life, of whatever origin, from a fresh perspective - from God's perspective.  And one image of God provided for us in scripture that we must never lose sight of is that of God as Judge. The Bible presents God as the judge of the whole earth! When Abraham interceded for his nephew Lot, he asked God the rhetorical question, "Will not...

It seems that a day never passes without hearing some form of terrible news of war from a far country. We hear of bombings in Syria, Mali and many other war torn places. The grief never ends. The world is field with war and rumours of war. War affects all of us. It is a global reality. Last century over 150 million lives were lost to war and genocide. Some have said history is nothing more than the history of war . The bible chronicles war as a major recurring fact of human history. An outworking of the fallen nature of man! Since the days of Cain we have been at war. But at the same time, it offers us an hopeful image of war – it often uses military imagery as a central metaphor to describe God’s character and his work in our world and in his people.  Not is war part of the salvation story, but God is a Warrior! In Exodus 15:3 after being delivered from Egypt, Israel sung, “The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is His name” . Throughout the Bible God wages wa...

It’s overwhelming (and somewhat dehumanizing) to realize that there are close to seven billion of us alive on the planet at this moment. But before we think it’s too much for God to know everything about every single one of us, we have to remember that there are more stars than that in just one arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. In fact, the Milky Way contains hundreds of billions of stars, and our God put each one in its place. - Louie Giglio & Matt Redman  ( Source : Indescribable)

The world was so intrigued by the universe that it sent a space shuttle. God so loved the world that He beat us to it and launched His own mission, sending His only Son. The miracle of the Christian gospel is that the One who was quite simply beyond our grasp drew near to us. He who was out of reach reached down to us. At the cross of Jesus Christ, we encounter the one true God on a mission to seek and save the lost. He might simply have impressed us with the soul-inspiring works of His hands, and awed us into submission. Yet our God chose to go much, much further—not simply wowing us with greatness, but wooing us with grace. - Louie Giglio & Matt Redman   (Source: Indescribable)

Aside from a few countries in the world, most nations are now ruled by presidents - those who are usually elected and whose reign is subject to popular mandate in one way or another. Even where kings or queens exist these are usually ceremonial. The notion of a powerful King who rules over his people as absolute Sovereign is an alien concept and one that is not easy to relate to in this century. This is a stark contrast to biblical times where the head of the nation was always an absolute monarchy. So pervasive was this form of government that when Israel left Egypt and entered the promised land, they could not resist asking God to give them their own king because they envied “all the other nations” that had human kings (1 Sam. 8: 5). One of the image of God given in the Bible as that of King whose sovereign rule and control extends to all things. God reigns supreme over all creation and history and we as human being are in every sense his subjects.During tim...

Perhaps the most well known image of God in the Bible is that of the good Shepherd, which is beautifully rendered in the treasured Psalm 23. Shepherds also feature as the primary metaphor for leaders in the New Testament, which we may miss because of the preference in newer translations for the term “pastor” rather than Shepherd.  Everyone who lived in the ancient Near East would have had no problem understanding this image of God. They would have either lived in a household that owned flocks or seen the shepherds who led their sheep to graze along the edges of settled areas. Many people living in highly developed societies are far removed from images of a staff-holding, sheep guiding shepherd surrounded by a flock of peacefully resting sheep and goats. But thankfully in many developing parts of the world the shepherd image of God is easily one they can relate to.  Prophet Isaiah looking forward in time to the coming of the Messiah Jesus as the coming warrior Shepherd, ...

Krac des Chevaliers  was one of the crown jewels of the crusader Latin kingdoms of the east. It was built as an Hospitaller stronghold by the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem to hold onto the gains that had been made during the crusades. It became crucial to the defence of the Crusader kingdoms between 1142 to 1271. While other Crusader strongholds were under threat from opposing forces, Krak des Chevaliers and its garrison of 2,000 soldiers dominated the surrounding area. It was   the centre of the Crusader defences  until 1271 and was the only major inland area to remain constantly under Crusader control in during the 13th century. Without the Krac des Chevalier all other kingdoms were vulnerable. One of the images of presented of God in the Bible of God is similar to that of Krac des Cheveliers . The Prophet Nahum declares, "The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble" [Nahum 1:7]. God is a stronghold! Many of us live thankfully insulated from wa...

One of the most powerful images of God presented in the Bible is a God who rides in the whirlwind and the storm. Prophet Nahum declares, "The Lord has His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet" (Nahum 1:3).  It is a tremendous image of the Creator. God has power  over and through the whirlwind because He himself rides on it. It speaks of his sovereign control over catastrophic and unpredictable force of natures. Forces feared by ordinary man such as powerful tornado and hurricanes are mere servants of God. He towards above all.  When the ancients looked at the storms they remembered this prophecy and exclaimed, yes, the clouds are the dust of his feet! We too need to keep this image of God firmly locked in our minds. It is a powerful challenge to current worldly thinking, where we have given "nature" a title of "mother" and worship it! The Bible says, no God controls it all!  But we also need ...

That image is similar to one found in Timothy Laniak's  Finding the Lost Images of God , which I read last week alongside my ongoing reading of Fyodor Dostoevsky's  Brothers Karamazov . Lost Images is part of a fascinating series I have begun reading called "Ancient Faith, Ancient Faith" put together by Gary Burge. So far it has six books in it, with Lost Images being the fifth book, but only my first! The series does not require you to read sequentially.  The book explores how images are used in the Bible to describe God and his relationship with his chosen people. The image above is that of God as the Divine Artisan. A poor grasp of of these images makes it difficult for us to comprehend the profound biblical revelations they communicate. Key to this is understanding the "cultural vehicles" of communication and that requires learning the cultural background of those who created them. Timothy Laniak wonderfully uses his background as an expert in Near...

The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that God is the one who authoritatively defines himself. We might imagine that God's love, for example, is defined as a relationship between himself and the world. But then a divine attribute would be dependent on the world. God would have needed the world in order to have an adequate object for his love. But Trinitarianism teaches us that God's love is defined, not by the world, but by the eternal love between the Father and the Son. God would have been a loving God even if he had chosen not to create the world. So God is sovereign in defining his own nature. And he is sovereign, not only in defining his love, but in exercising it. He loves the world, not because he must, but because he chooses freely to do so. - John M. Frame   ( Source : The Doctrine of God )

God is the eternal, independent, and self-existent Being; the Being whose purposes and actions spring from himself, without foreign motive or influence; he who is absolute in dominion; the most pure, the most simple, the most spiritual of all essences; infinitely perfect; and eternally self-sufficient, needing nothing that he has made; illimitable in his immensity, inconceivable in his mode of existence, and indescribable in his essence; known fully only by himself, because an infinite mind can only be fully comprehended by itself. In a word, a Being who, from his infinite wisdom, cannot err or be deceived, and from his infinite goodness, can do nothing but what is eternally just, and right, and kind. - Adam Clarke , 1762-1832 ( Source : Commentary on the Bible )

God does not “love” us without liking us—through gritted teeth—as “Christian” love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core—which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word love. - Dallas Willard   ( Source : The Divine Conspiracy )

I am currently teaching through Nahum at  one of our sister churches. As I was preparing to preach on Nahum 1:12-13 on God's Sovereignty Over Suffering , I came across this quote from Andrew White from his autobiographical account of his life as Vicar of Baghdad, in post-Saddam-Hussein Iraq. Andrew observes God’s unmovable presence in a dangerous city :  However dreadful the tragedy, My Lord is there. Amidst the greatest havoc I have witnessed in post war Iraq, or in Gaza, or in Bethlehem during the siege, I have still seen God’s glory…I have seen heavens opened and glimpsed something of the majesty, might and love of God. When life is full of despair, it is only the glory of God that truly sustains. There have been times when everything has gone wrong, when friends and colleagues have been killed, and there has seemed no hope. It is at times like this that I ask God to show me his glory…so I circulate among the powerful people in Pentagon, Congress and Par...

The world is more delicious than it needs to be. We have a superabundance of divine goodness and generosity. God went over the top. We don’t need the variety we enjoy, but he gave it to us out of sheer exuberant joy and grace. God’s creative joy wasn’t only for the beginning of creation, leaving us “eating leftovers.” God continues to sustain creation out of joy. “The bloom of yeast lies upon the grape skins year after year because He likes it; C6H12O6=2C2H5OH+2CO2 is a dependable process because, every September, He says, That was nice; do it again. From A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community and Mission around the Table  by Tim Chester. Only a delicious God would create such a delicious world! He is truly pleasant and sweet in all dimensions!